Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code (8 page)

It could have been monstrous. With so many humanoids cramming themselves into such a tight space, hardly ever sleeping, keeping up a constant level of activity for thirty-five-point-six hours a day, the waste and pollution and disease and tension they generated could have been all but unbearable. But over millennia of close-knit living, the Denobulans had become experts on sanitation and hygiene, and more generally on living together in close quarters. Their world had only one vast continent, most of whose interior was profoundly arid, deprived of moisture by its sheer distance from the ocean. The Denobulans had evolved in the forests along the continent’s southwest coast, sustained by the monsoonal rains and protected from the devastating hurricanes that frequently lashed the eastern seaboard. But even though their modern technology had allowed them to irrigate the desert, mitigate
the storms, and spread more widely across the continent, the people of Denobula retained their communal instincts and huddled together by choice, with twelve billion Denobulans crammed into an area barely larger than China or Canada, leaving more than ninety percent of the planet’s single vast continent unpopulated and wild. Being good neighbors, and good caretakers of their finite environment, had been a basic survival strategy for them.

Not that their caretaking was entirely peaceful; they saw themselves as part of the ecosystem they shared, and they often hunted the lemurs and various other small species for food, even in modern times. But they had long since abandoned hunting animals advanced enough to have any level of awareness, and were as humane as they could be toward the species they did hunt, taking no more than necessary and dispatching them as painlessly as possible. Their measured approach to utilizing the plants and animals of their world as integral parts of their civilization and technology explained much to Sato about Phlox’s approach to medicine.

Indeed, a large part of what made the city so beautiful for Hoshi was that she could see it through Phlox’s eyes. He had spoken of it in such glowing and romanticized terms over the years of their friendship that she had expected the reality to disappoint, but instead she found herself reminded of the warm feelings he had often expressed for his home and its occupants. She had seen many remarkable sights on the strange new worlds she’d visited over her fourteen years in space, but this time, the experience was personal, and that made it more profound.

Which made her all the sadder that she could not share it with the man she was going to marry.

Phlox had invited Takashi Kimura to attend his daughter
Vaneel’s wedding along with Hoshi; indeed, the doctor had been a witness to Sato’s acceptance of Kimura’s proposal, and had invited them to make it a double wedding. But this had proven impossible. Kimura had sustained severe injuries and brain damage during a battle with V’Las’s revolutionary forces on Vulcan not long ago, forcing him to give up his career as
Endeavour
’s armory officer. This had been liberating for the couple in a way, freeing them to marry now that they were no longer serving together—but that was one of the few compensations for the ordeal Takashi was now enduring. He was back home in Hokkaido on Earth, going through intensive physical and neuroplastic therapy with his family’s support. Though he’d hoped to make it to the wedding, his therapy was at too sensitive a stage right now, so he’d had to send his apologies. There was nothing Hoshi wanted more than to be with him now to offer her aid and comfort, but her duties to Starfleet and
Endeavour
had prohibited it, and Kimura had refused to let her sacrifice her career for his benefit.

Though she had to admit, there was a small, traitorous part of her that was relieved not to have to deal with the struggle he was enduring right now—that was glad to skip over it and eventually, hopefully, return to find him recovered and adjusted, or as close to it as his cognitive damage allowed. What did that say about her? Phlox had assured her that it was a natural impulse, one that she would not hesitate to reject given the opportunity to be with her fiancé. Still, she had less faith in her motives than Phlox did.

Yet it was impossible to wallow in regret for long, not while surrounded by dozens of Phlox’s relatives, most of whom were as boisterous and outgoing as he was. The pre-wedding gathering was held in a large rooftop pavilion in the middle of the city, overlooking the wide Gronim River
that snaked and twisted among its towers. Since Denobulans rarely slept, they had little need for homes to return to on a nightly basis, and thus they led a peripatetic existence. Most of the structures in the city were for communal use: offices and meeting halls; well-developed research centers, libraries, and schools; stores where goods were loaned freely to those who needed them; theaters, restaurants, and taverns; medical clinics, gymnasiums, and public baths; hallucinatoriums where Denobulans could go to safely indulge and share the altered states of consciousness that served them in lieu of dreams.

Denobulans did have private places of their own—“nests” where they bedded down for their annual hibernation, offices and studios for their work, storehouses for their less transient possessions—but with no permanent homes as such, even family members rarely lived together, which was how they could manage having three spouses apiece who each had two other spouses of their own. It was really only for gatherings like this that entire families came together, requiring the rental of a meeting pavilion. If one could even define an “entire family” with so many branching interconnections. Phlox was probably related through marriage to virtually every other Denobulan on the planet, if you took it through a long enough chain of mutual spouses.

In the case of Vaneel’s wedding, the relevant family on the Denobulan side consisted mainly of the biological parents of the bride—Phlox and his second wife, Feezal, a striking blond quantum engineer whom Sato remembered from her occasional visits to
Enterprise
and
Endeavour
over the years—plus their other respective spouses and children. That limited it to a manageable three fathers and three mothers, plus various of Vaneel’s half-siblings and siblings-in-law. Not to mention
her first two husbands, a lanky Denobulan performance artist named Thesh and a strongly built human biochemist named Hong Sun-woo. Sato felt that Vaneel had fine taste in men. But then, Phlox’s younger daughter was quite a beauty herself, a gamine strawberry blond with piercing, pale green eyes and an enormous, aggressively warm smile. Vaneel had been attracting suitors for a good two decades now, and she had taken numerous lovers, according to Phlox’s proud boasts; but she had been far more particular in her selection of husbands, accumulating them gradually and one at a time, instead of in pairs or triads as many Denobulans did.

“Which has been to the enduring frustration of my first wife,” Sato heard Phlox saying from behind her as she stared out at the city. She turned to see the doctor approaching with a group including Captain T’Pol, Admiral Archer, and the admiral’s lanky, elegant girlfriend Danica Erickson, along with Phlox’s old Interspecies Medical Exchange colleague Doctor Jeremy Lucas, a cheerful, portly man with a walrus mustache. “Vesena couldn’t be more thrilled that Vaneel is finally completing her triad—particularly with an Antaran. In her mind, that makes this wedding a historic event, and she’s determined to manage it to perfection.”

“I thought the responsibility for planning a Denobulan wedding resided with the biological parents,” T’Pol observed.

“Normally, yes, but Vesena is such a natural leader and organizer. She’s always taken an active interest in the marital prospects of her various offspring, spouses, and more distant relations.”

“Don’t mince words, Dad,” interrupted a mature, balding Denobulan man standing nearby. Hoshi recognized him as Phlox’s eldest son, Vleb, an artist specializing in pottery. Although at the moment his sensitive fingers cradled a more
utilitarian vessel, a tall glass containing a rapidly dwindling supply of Denobulan wine. “You mean that Mom is a controlling tyrant who wants everything done her way.”

“She simply wants to see to the well-being of every member of the family,” Phlox replied in more diplomatic tones.

“Which is why she’s not speaking to Groznik—
again
. And why he had to move clear to another planet to get away from her—
again
.”

Phlox refused to be baited. “Well, Feezal and I were both busy with matters of our own offworld, so we were happy to let Vesena take charge of planning the wedding.”

“ ‘Busy,’ he says,” Doctor Lucas put in with a Santa Claus chuckle. “Called in to consult with the Klingon High Council, no less. Not many doctors can say they’ve done that and lived to tell about it.”

“It wasn’t that bad, Jeremy,” Phlox replied. “Indeed, a ­Klingon succession dispute can be downright relaxing compared to planning a Denobulan wedding. At the very least, there are fewer factions whose agendas need to be balanced.”

“I can believe it,” said Dani Erickson in her warm alto voice. She was a tall, brown-complexioned woman with intense dark eyes and a large, ready smile. “I had a hard enough time just dealing with my father while he was alive. I can’t even keep track of how many relatives you have.”

Archer furrowed his brow. “Didn’t you once tell me, Phlox, that your family had something like five hundred . . . no, seven hundred and twenty relationships, forty-two of them romantic? I admit I could never work out the math there.”

“Hmm, let’s see,” Phlox answered. “Ah, yes, that was when I performed the pituitary gland transplant on Porthos. Let’s see, that was several months before Feezal visited
Enterprise
 . . .
yes, at the time, there were thirty-one children in the family—limiting it to second-tier relationships for simplicity, of course, so only counting myself, my spouses, their spouses, and our respective children.” He cleared his throat uneasily. “Although I would’ve been excluding my younger two sons, Tullis and Mettus, who weren’t speaking with the rest of the family at the time. Well, Tullis has come around now, at least; he and his wives are right—um, over there somewhere, I think.”

“Oh, I remember Tullis,” Lucas said. “One of those Denobulans who thought that leaving the planet meant betraying their connection to nature.” He turned to the Starfleet officers. “I’m afraid not all Denobulans are as well-traveled as Phlox and most of his relatives. It’s why you don’t see that many of them offworld, compared to their population size.”

“I know,” Archer said. “It’s also part of why the Federation is having so much trouble persuading them to join.”

“Well, there’s always hope, Admiral,” said Phlox. “I’m happy to say that Tullis, for one, changed his mind years ago. Vaneel deserves the lion’s share of the credit for that, reaching out to him when she married Sun-woo and encouraging him to get to know his new brother-in-law.”

“She’s amazing, that girl,” Vleb interrupted. “Tullis turns his back on the whole family when Rabb moves offworld and marries a Tiburon and a Tellarite.”

“Rabb is their half-brother, Feezal and Bybix’s son,” Phlox interposed for the group.

Vleb went on regardless. “Didn’t speak to us for two decades. I still don’t know how Vaneel talked him around.” The potter took another hefty sip of his drink, then shook his balding head. “Too bad she couldn’t do the same for Mettus.”

An awkward silence fell over the group, and Sato winced
to see the pain on Phlox’s face at the reminder of his still-estranged son. After a moment, T’Pol diplomatically resumed the earlier conversation. “Doctor, that would have left twenty-nine children and ten spouses. The total number of relationships among thirty-nine individuals taken two at a time would be seven hundred and forty-one.”

“Ah! Yes, well, you have to realize that Vesena’s son Kornob and his three wives had never met Bybix and the two wives he had at the time, since Kornob lives on B’Saari Two and Bybix lives on Tiburon. So that’s twenty-one potential relationships down.”

“So the forty-two romantic ones?” Dani asked.

“Within two tiers of myself, that includes all the marriages among me, my wives, and their other husbands—that’s ten—plus our children’s marriages, of which there were sixteen at the time. Plus the sixteen potential pairings between co-wives or co-husbands, among those who are receptive to such things.” He gave a wry grin. “I’ve always been a bit disappointed that Kovlin is only interested in females, given how Feezal praises his prowess. I wouldn’t have minded trying it for myself. But to each their own, as the humans say.

“And of course,” he went on, “we’ve had several more marriages in the years since then. Let’s see, Filoona married Tresc, Rabb married Dworra Sindar, Rempal married Morren and Dresp, and of course there were Vaneel’s first two husbands and now Pehle completing the triad. And my third wife, Nullim, has had two children since then—Doulin with her second husband and Kronna with her third. And that’s not even counting the grandchildren! Ah, such a blessing to have a large and growing family.” He smiled at Sato. “As I’m sure you’ll discover yourself in due time, Hoshi!”

Sato gave a feeble smile in response. Fortunately, she was
spared from further discussion of her engagement when an early-evening rainstorm broke out. The Denobulans cheered this as an auspicious omen for the impending marriage—not as a superstition, merely an acknowledgment of the vital role the monsoon rains played in sustaining the cycle of life. But out of deference for their offworld guests, they moved the festivities into the open-walled pavilion at the center of the roof. The resultant reshuffling of guests brought Phlox and the Starfleet group in proximity to the bride and groom themselves, and Phlox introduced them to one another with pride.

Vaneel’s fiancé, Pehle Retab, was a tall, robust Antaran man, pale of skin with a high hairline and a set of orbital and frontal ridges whose shape vaguely reminded Sato of the head and horns of an antelope. His long, tan hair was gathered into several tight, intricate braids that jostled one another between his shoulder blades as he moved and spoke with lively energy. Sato continued to approve of Vaneel’s taste in males. “I’m a xenobotanist,” he said to the group. “Once we began to normalize relations with Denobula, I welcomed the chance to come here and study the biosphere—not only the indigenous species, but the way the Denobulans had learned to coexist with them. Our own people have had more difficulty finding a healthy balance with our ecology.”