“That’s not what this is about! I’m just . . . tryin’ to help out. To do what I do now, but on your behalf. Because you’re someone important to me.”
“ ‘Someone important.’ A nebulous characterization. Why should I accept your unsolicited intervention when neither of us even knows how our relationship is defined?”
“So now you’re mad at me because I care about you?”
“Because you seem to care more about your secrets, your evasions, and your games of deceit.”
“It’s my life now. I can’t help that.”
“And what kind of life is it? A life without truth is illogical. Surak wrote that the truth is simply the actual state of the universe. To live at odds with the truth is to be in conflict with reality itself. Such an existence is unsustainable.”
Trip threw up his hands. “Good ol’ Surak, a quote for every occasion. Like Vulcans are some great paragons of truth. What about that Kolinahr thing Surak preached? Purging all emotion forever? You and I both know there’s no such thing as a Vulcan without emotion. Where’s the truth in that?”
She gave him an icy glare. “You are attempting to offend me in order to avoid confronting my questions about yourself.”
“Well, evasion seems to be what I do now, doesn’t it?” He began pulling on his pants under his robe. “Maybe I better just be true to form and slink back into the shadows.”
“If that is where you are most comfortable.”
He tossed the robe aside and pulled on his shirt. “If you don’t mind, I’ll show myself out.”
“Technically, I never invited you in.”
He gave her a meaningful stare. “Now, we both know that’s a lie.”
T’Pol merely stared back in silence until he left.
Then she curled up in bed, alone, and longed for sleep that never came.
March 24, 2164
U.S.S. Endeavour, Kandari Sector
“The Rigelians are hiding something,” said Aranthanien ch’Revash.
Captain T’Pol studied her first officer from across the situation table at the rear of Endeavour’s bridge. “Why do you say that, Commander?”
They stood around the table with Lieutenant Commander Hoshi Sato and Lieutenant Elizabeth Cutler, discussing the scientific surveys they would undertake of the Raij’hl system (which humans called Beta Rigel to distinguish it from their soundalike name for a more distant star) while Admiral Archer handled the political negotiations. The system was astrophysically unusual—not necessarily for having multiple planets in its habitable zone, for many star systems were similarly densely packed, but for having all of them be Minshara-class and actually inhabited. Not to mention that its primary star Raij was a type-A subgiant and thus should not be long-lived enough to host life-sustaining worlds. The Rigelians’ leading theory, Cutler had explained, was that it had originally been a binary pair of smaller, slower-burning stars that had merged together shortly before multicellular life arose in the system—the resultant upheavals possibly prompting faster evolution as life was challenged to adapt.
But Thanien’s interest was in the twin-world system currently displayed on the situation table, Rigel VII and VIII. The latter was a barren, heavily cratered and ridged ice planet, like some of the sister moons of Andoria; any liquid water it held was buried a thousand kilometers or more beneath its icy crust. But the larger Rigel VII was a more terrestrial world, beyond the habitable zone but heated by internal radioisotopes and tidal kneading from its sister planet’s gravity, and thus warm enough to host sparse but stable oceans and a viable ecosystem—as well as an indigenous humanoid population. “The databases they have sent us say almost nothing about these Kalar. Nothing about their origins, their biology, their government. Why so little information?”
The science officer pursed her lips. “Well, the Kalar aren’t part of the Trade Commission, sir, and aren’t even spacefaring like Rigel IV. And there’s a total ban on contact, so the other Rigelians wouldn’t have much sociological information.”
“Even so, there must have been enough early contact to give them reason to forbid subsequent interaction. Yet the information here is not even commensurate with that. There is no data on how the other Rigelians became aware of these Kalar in the first place.” He frowned, antennae curving forward and wide in wariness. “It smells of secrets. Once we reach the system, I recommend we investigate. Conduct extensive scans of Rigel VII, perhaps send a shuttlepod to conduct a clandestine survey.”
“Is that wise?” Sato asked. “We’re in the middle of some pretty delicate negotiations with the Rigelians. We don’t want to risk offending them.”