"Na'shau etwel du, katravahsu kla-hilsular svi'vaik vuhnaya t'fai-tukh..."
A lifetime of acquired skills through extensive training stirred and began processing the words of the Vulcan professor. We greet you, fellow seeker of knowledge in its infinite diversity. The words slid with a practiced ease through Hoshi Sato's thoughts, her trusted common ground on a world where very little existed.
Looking into the woman's cool even stare, Hoshi resisted the urge to turn away and relieve her uneasiness. Navun's expression lingered, as though waiting for some disdainful human emotion--like petulance, perhaps, or jealousy--to spill forth from the human before her with all the grace of a screaming toddler. Navun had never stepped foot on Earth, Hoshi realized. Her stare would have been considered rude.
Perhaps it was whimsical to believe that the Vulcans she'd worked near at the Institute in San Francisco averted their eyes out of empathy. Undoubtedly it went against their nature, but maybe they respected that humans did not appreciate staring, and it had made it easier to work with them. Before Vulcan logic went on the warpath and calmly speared every tendril of feeling in sight--ambivalence being the sole survivor--the two species still shared the same baser emotional instincts. In a way then the possibility of empathy held some merit, so Hoshi still entertained the notion. It was, she realized, an old habit of her mothers that she had picked up, but humanizing the inhuman was now merely a contemporary form of discrimination.
Whatever the reason, Vulcans on Earth did not stare as these Vulcans did. Their eyes watched her through cold, impenetrable glass.
Navun, Hoshi thought. The name meant success.
Pulling her thick robe closer, the Vulcan professor spoke her name. To Hoshi she looked perfectly comfortable in the layers that draped her shoulders. Hoshi frowned, looking down at the white t-shirt that clung with sweat to her own figure. It would take a more than a week to become fully acclimatized to the hot Vulcan world, and she'd always hated the heat. Her suitcases rested on the stone floor beside her feet.
"Stariben, komihn," another of the Vulcans flanking Navun said.
They had asked her to speak, most likely in greeting. Hoshi considered how they would react if she did as impulse demanded and fled back to the transport that would return her to Earth. She had been on this hot world only a half-hour, but a pining for home had already settled into every pore of her skin. She struggled to remember why she had accepted the offer to join the exchange program in the first place.
At her feet, the stone floor was bland, and nothing like the blue and white tile of her mother's kitchen. The sky stared down through a large overheard window, unforgiving and swirling with dust. Hoshi wondered if she would be able to recognize any familiar constellations come nightfall.
Navun was still waiting for a response. Hoshi could feel herself growing breathless. Did Vulcans rely on a lower percentage of oxygen in air? They must, she realized, for it seemed thin, as though standing at the top of a mountain, gasping for breath, looking down, and trying frantically not to fall off.
Staring at her hands, Hoshi tried to bring her agitation under control. Briefly remembering why she'd decided to come to Vulcan, she cursed inwardly at her attempts to overcome the listless complacency that had fatigued her at home.
Rousing from her thoughts, Hoshi's gaze was drawn inexplicably back to her clammy hands--
They were shaking. Clutching them together, she glanced up to meet expectant stares and gasped.
She couldn't stay.
"Itaren nash-veh dular, Navun," she said, breaking the thundering silence, then stopped abruptly. It had been her intention to tell them she was leaving, but instead, she had thanked them. A scream tore threw her, inwardly, stunned at her tongue's betrayal.
Her eyes burning, Hoshi watched as Navun departed, and one of the Vulcans who had remained silent throughout the exchange led Hoshi towards the upper staircase. She followed, angry with her feet for following so willingly. Deserted light years from home, she thought, then swallowed around the lump that had grown thick in her throat.
The room in the dormitory was sparse and unremarkable. A bed lay against the wall next to a forlorn looking dresser and a small night table, completing the room's complement of furniture. There was only one small window on the wall across from the door for light, Hoshi realized, and she would have to squeeze past the dresser to climb into bed.
Dropping her bags onto the floor, she burst into hot tears.
Her skin was warm as she pressed two fingers into the soft groove of tendons that ran elegantly down her neck. Beneath them, Hoshi could feel her blood surging, through blood vessels large and small, veins, arteries, and threadlike capillaries. Her pulse spoke the ultimate language, the words that told her she was alive, but there had been moments during the last four and half months when she had needed the reassurance, to know that her heart was indeed beating and that her cells were being fed with oxygen and nutrients, to overcome the deadly monotonous despair that would occasionally settle into every other aspect of her self. Then her hand would fly to her throat or clutch at her wrist, and in those moments her veins flowed with suffocating need, not blood.
As Hoshi had slowly become accustomed to this Vulcan city's atmosphere, her lungs had filled with dust and she often imagined it choking the life out of her.
She had no motivation here, Hoshi often acknowledged. Always, pressure had been as familiar as syntax and conjugations, her companion as she fought through university, and a sister in graduate school when she was years younger than her fellow scholars. Instead there was only fear, because prodigies like Newton and Hawking and Hoshi Sato were not blessed with graceful ignorance. There was nothing so frightening as the misunderstood.
A movement caught Hoshi's attention. Her student glanced up from his textbook.
"Have you submitted my test results yet?" Turok asked in English, his light brown hair gleaming beneath the academic lights of the library they sat in. Slowly he raised a pointed eyebrow.
Hoshi bit her lip. The kid was infuriating, every bit aware of what her answer would be--and at least 15 years older than her in Earth years.
"If you had bothered to listen to me, you would know that we discussed this yesterday," she said, willing her voice to remain firm despite her growing impatience. "Navun reviews your test data and will submit it. I don't know how you did."
She watched him pause, squinting in concentration, then look up. "Often do you know much at all," he replied.
It was intended as an insult, but was misplaced. Four months ago she might have laughed. Instead, Hoshi returned the even stare and responded in Vulcan. "I think you meant to use the word rarely, Turok." She pronounced the word slow, as if speaking to a child. Strain coloured her tone. "Not often, or else it would seem we were actually getting along."
Turok remained silent in response. Victory, she thought.
A moment later, his datapadd clattered on the desktop. "Would you agree that a student's ability reflects his instructor's, Hoshi?" he asked. Turok began shrugging into his dark blue robe and watched her with a thoughtful expression.
She grinned suddenly. He must have frustrated his mother to no end as a child. Did she encourage him to challenge every person who tried to help him?
Turok made for the exit with an almost melodramatic flourish, nodding at her on his way out. She sighed as she settled back into the library chair, then thought again of his mother. Savin had been one of the first Vulcan ambassadors to travel to Earth, and in a fit of psychoanalysis once, Hoshi blamed her absence from the Vulcan homeworld for Turok's attitude towards humanity.
To the disdain of some of his classmates, Turok was indifferent towards Surak's teachings, and yet was one of the sharpest minds of his graduating class. He was brilliant, but he remained undisciplined. Hoshi's placement on Vulcan was rumoured to be his mother's doing, her attempt to assuage a few of his more chaotic, emotional impulses in exchange for his return to studies with logic as its foundation.
Savin had written a report to the university, outlining the candidates she would consider acceptable for her son's exo-linguistics instructor in terran languages. It was completely unsolicited, but that really hadn't mattered for though Savin the mother had lost hold of her son, Savin the ambassador still held great political influence in the area. The list of humans Savin had prepared, naming those professors she would allow to instruct Turok--from across the entirety of Earth--identified three people, no more and no less. Hoshi had been the third.
Since arriving on Vulcan, Hoshi had learned of the t'an s'at, a continual mind conditioning process that was started at an early age by Vulcan parents. Savin had begun this process of intellectually deconstructing her son's emotional patterns, but her promotion from politics to ambassador on behalf of the city of Kor'la left her increasingly little time with Turok.
As travel took her further and further away, she'd turned to a social support group that instructed orphaned Vulcan youth in the t'an s'at for her son's studies. Although a willing participant at first, Turok was at a critical point in his lessons when Savin gave up her role entirely and travelled to Earth on behalf of the Vulcan homeworld. Not surprisingly, at least to Hoshi, Turok abandoned the group and became stranded in his development. Now she often saw him struggle to contain emotional outbursts so as to not be completely ostracized by his peers, then at other times, behave so outwardly emotional that he seemed human. During those times, Hoshi never missed home.
He had become fluent beneath her instruction in six of the seven languages Hoshi was to teach him. English remained his only hurdle, a complex language of almost a million words, rooted in Latin, Saxon and Greek and owing much to Algonquin, Hebrew, Malay, Maori, Zulu and Hmong. It was proving to be the most difficult of all Earth languages for him to master. Turok was especially irritated with the fact that for every word, there were at least two alternatives, and did not yet understand that context would not allow him to use just any of them.
As difficult as he was to tutor, she and Turok had developed an understanding. They had found mutual ground. Hoshi's father had held high expectations for her future, but he had always been a part of her life. Savin had, in all the ways that mattered to her son, abandoned her familial responsibilities many years ago, but now demanded that Turok follow the footsteps of his grandfather. He had no choice in how his future would unfold, and of all things, the soon-to-graduate doctor wanted to travel among the stars.
Collecting her things for the commute back to the university, she followed his steps and made her way out into the hot night. Thin wispy tendrils trailed weeping across the dark sky, rare clouds indeed for the city of Kor'la. Turok, Hoshi discovered as she looked around, was nowhere in sight. Looking for an unfamiliar face, she surmised, amongst the handful of alien species that called this Vulcan city home.
In this way, Turok was truly her opposite. Although she wasn't opposed to interacting with other species, she had never sought such an opportunity out until necessity dictated it, particularly here on Vulcan. Then the other night, Earth's other exchange professor to the university, Marek, had taken her out for a drink and introduced her to a friend of his. The other man's bright blue skin and arthropod-like antennae had enchanted her as she stood next to him.
Hoshi had expected the experience, words shared between two species on first contact, to be enlightened, meaningful, and earth-shatteringly distinct from the comparably mundane conversations between humans--childish, immature expectations, she soon discovered, for it was nothing like that. When Marek disappeared, lost to the swirling masses, she'd quickly become nervous on her own, then one of the bar candles had flared, illuminating the man's cerulean skin, and the Andorian had stunned her with a pick-up line. What was the pon farr?
She'd stammered for a second, then responded fluently, surprising herself.
It had been fun, and her new friend had made her smile, and now, whenever Hoshi remembered how his antennae had twitched, she felt--
Exhilarated.
That was language. This was language. Why had it never felt like this before?
There came a sharp knock on the door. Short raps broke through her sleep, and Hoshi stumbled out of bed, banging her shin on the night table. She could make out shuffling in the hall.
"Hoshi?"
Standing with his hands tightly clasped through the long sleeves of his robe, the stark corridor enveloped Turok in shadow, and Hoshi self-consciously tugged on the hem of her white tank.
"What are you doing here?" she finally asked.
Turok blew out a breath. He began speaking, and his words were hurried, so much so that he began rambling in Vulcan. When she caught his face in the moonlight shining through her window, his eyes were wide.
"I'm leaving tonight, Hoshi. Please do not tell anyone I have been here--Navun would expect you to try to convince me otherwise, and would terminate your exchange if you did not report my plans to her immediately. I am not to be convinced." He drew a shaky breath, and then his voice was firm. "There is a ship of my people leaving for deep space within the hour. I am to join them."
Hoshi took in the sparkle that lit his eye. Turok's impulsive nature had drawn the scorn of his classmates. He had avoided the teachings of Surak for his scholar years, she'd learned, more out of denial and rebellion than an actual objection to logic, but his anticipation was nearly palpable. Frowning, she mentally acknowledged that he confused the hell out of her.
"Have you told your mother?" she asked, knowing his answer. He shook his head.
"She will not understand. If I stay, I will practice medicine as my antecedent did." He raised a hand. "There is no alternative--and it is not what I want."
Hoshi sighed, remembering how Turok spoke at length of space travel whenever she'd allow a break in their lessons. Like the rest of his classmates, he would eventually study, accept and live by Surak's teachings, and afterwards he would never allow himself the opportunity to pursue a career in deep space. It saddened her.
Rousing herself from her thoughts, Hoshi found him waiting quietly, still standing in the doorway. She ushered him inside, and Turok stood behind the closed door.
"Can you tell me about this ship you're leaving on?"
"It is a civilian ship," he began, this time slowly and in English, and she thought he might have switched out of respect for her--a good sign that he had overcome the irrationality that had coloured his face when he first arrived. Turok stood in the middle of the room, looking out of place. "They call themselves V'tosh ka'tur."
"Vulcans without logic?" She frowned. "Is that how you feel?"
Turok's gaze pierced hers, and he seemed amused. "I do not know what I...feel." He said the word as though he were examining an unflattering outfit in a mirror. "But if this is to be my only opportunity, I must take it. I do not yet meditate nightly. It would not be difficult to adapt."
Hoshi stared at him hard. She could feel his longing for adventure--one he would never find on the Vulcan homeworld. And there was something else, an emotion that caused his eyes to glitter and his English to falter.
Exhilaration. She knew what that felt like.
Hoshi nodded, suddenly feeling wistful. "You have been an excellent student, Turok," she murmured. "I'll miss you."
Turok raised an eyebrow. "Do not lie, Hoshi. You have not enjoyed teaching me as much as you claim. I was far from an excellent student, and Vulcan children have more self-discipline than I."
Hoshi grinned.
"You, on the other hand, are relentless. I will remember your courage." Turok headed towards the door, then turned as he entered the hallway. He raised a hand and slowly spread his fingers into a V shape. "Live long and prosper, Hoshi Sato."
She watched him go, the glitter of anticipation she'd seen in his eyes swimming before her.
A buzz of insects droned endlessly. He held his hand towards her, a small compact speaker in the centre of his brown palm. A guttural, throaty voice filled the air.
Hoshi stopped. "What's that?" she asked. It sounded like the grunting of wild animals.
"It's a sample of the Klingon language from the Vulcan linguistic database," said Jonathan Archer, a tan jacket complementing his dark hair. They stood beneath the shade of a large brush of vegetation, a leafy grove whose shade provided very little relief from the humid Brazilian weather. Her eyes noticed a shiny film of sweat on the Starfleet captain's forehead, but her ears remained fixed on the little speaker.
"I thought you said the Vulcans were opposed to this," Hoshi murmured, remembering the mission.
"They are," Jon acknowledged slowly, "but we agreed to make a few compromises."
"What do you know of the Klingons?" she asked.
He shifted, sure to be uncomfortable in the heat. "Not much," Jon said. "An empire of warriors with 80 poly-guttural dialects constructed on adaptive syntax." A mischievous tone danced in his voice.
She gazed in speculation at the device he held. "Turn it up."
Instead, Jon handed over the little speaker, and Hoshi's slim fingers wrapped around it. She let her fingers fiddle with the volume knob, and she looked up to see a smile playing upon his lips.
"Think of it," he said then. "You'd be the first human to talk to these people. Do you really want someone else to do it?"
Her stomach fluttered. Hoshi fixed him with a look, finally knowing why Jonathan Archer's eyes sparkled.
She was going to travel among the stars.
Remembering Turok and the Andorian she'd met in a darkened restaurant on Vulcan a year before, Hoshi smiled, then turned the volume on the little speaker up until the throaty Klingon voices filled her ears once more.
A thrill of exhilaration suddenly raced through her, and she laughed.
This was language.
Warp 5 Complex
Star Trek Enterprise fan fiction archive
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Author's Chapter Notes: Takes place sometime in the years prior to the launch of Enterprise. Thanks to Taryn Eve, Mara Greengrass, Smurf, Ozchick and snowballjane from EWB for their comments and suggestions. |
All fiction is archived at the Warp 5 Complex with the authors' express permission.
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