Star Trek(30)

June 14, 2164

Planetoid “Babel,” orbiting Gliese 283 B

Director Sedra Hemnask of the Rigelian Trade Commission surveyed the barren surface beyond the viewport of Babel Station’s reception dome: an expanse of cratered rock and regolith dimly illuminated by the tiny red dwarf it orbited, half of an obscure, unclaimed binary system whose primary star had long ago sloughed off its atmosphere and left behind a white-dwarf corpse and a smattering of burned, lifeless worlds. “An unlikely soil,” she mused, “for sowing the seeds of new nations.”

“I see what you mean,” Jonathan Archer told the Zami Rigelian as he gazed out the port with her. “But it’s got quite a history behind it.”

“Really?” Her large green eyes lit up with interest.

He smiled and began to tell the story. Interstellar histories that were half-legend told of a pair of starfaring civilizations, Menthar and Promellia, locked in an intractable holy war for generations. Some eight centuries ago, after their worlds had been devastated and their populations reduced largely to refugee fleets, a last-ditch peacemaking effort was undertaken. Both sides recruited a neutral race to build an outpost on a lifeless subplanet in a small, dead star system hundreds of light-years from either species’ territory—a place that neither side would have any reason to fight over, and where they could negotiate far removed from factions seeking to co-opt them or sabotage their efforts. This outpost, they hoped, would be the site of a decisive peace conference that would save both civilizations from extinction.

Yet before the outpost was even completed, the Menthar and Promellian fleets had converged almost by accident around the final surviving colony, in an as-yet-undiscovered system that the histories called Orelious. The resultant unplanned battle had escalated to the point that both sides had gone all in, every surviving ship called in as reinforcements. Even the peacemakers had been grimly obliged to join the fight in defense of the few survivors. “And nobody in local space ever heard from them again,” Archer finished. “Some legends say they both got caught by a doomsday weapon that destroyed the planet they were fighting over. Some say one deliberately destroyed itself to take the others with them.”

“How awful.”

“Well, some historians think the survivors just scattered, finding new homes and taking new names. I hope that’s the case, but nobody knows for sure. All we know,” he said, gesturing around them, “is what they left us. A grand creation that fell apart because its creators couldn’t get along. Like the Tower of Babel in Earth mythology.”

“Ahh, hence your code name for it,” Hemnask said. Pausing for thought, she smiled. “I can guess—this site is used for diplomatic talks as a reminder of the cost should those talks fail.”

“Exactly,” Archer replied, impressed by her sharp mind. “Starting about four centuries ago with the Ramatis Choral Debates. The people of Ramatis succeeded in staving off war and are admired as great diplomats to this day. Since then, a number of civilizations have used Babel as neutral ground to hash out their differences and negotiate treaties. Like the Andorians and Tellarites a decade ago, when they asked Earth to mediate a trade dispute.” He told her how the Romulan stealth attacks intended to disrupt that conference had backfired, prompting Earth, Andoria, Tellar, and Vulcan to come together against their common foe. Those first Babel talks had led to the formation of the Coalition of Planets the following year; then, after the war, the planetoid had hosted the preliminary talks for the formation of the Federation—although the final signing ceremony had been held on Earth, since founding a nation here would have undermined the sanctity of this neutral ground.

“It’s wise to have such reminders of history’s grim lessons,” Hemnask told him. “The Governing Board is based in Tregon for much the same reason. Centuries ago, it was the site of a great massacre of my Zami ancestors by the Jelna. My people had only been on Five for a few generations then, and when Rigelian fever spread across both our worlds, the Jelna came to see aliens as unclean and drove us from their cities. The fact that the fever ravaged Four even worse mattered little to them. And by driving us out, they probably delayed a cure, for it was Zami physicians who eventually discovered how to treat the fever with ryetalyn. Tregon has stood ever since as an object lesson for tolerance and cooperation. It reminds us that all our people are equally Rigelian, whatever world they come from.”

Archer’s appreciative reply was drowned out by shouting from nearby. He turned to see Rogra jav Baur, the Tellarite ambassador, engaged in a vocal confrontation with his counterpart from Mars, Mikhail Kamenev, while the Earth and Alpha Centauri delegates stood on their respective flanks. “Excuse me,” he said to Hemnask, embarrassed that the representatives of his own Federation evidently needed a refresher in that same lesson.