Mestral’s Legacy: Chapter 31

“What do you mean ‘not human’?” Jonathan asked. He and T’Pol had decided to have an early breakfast since it had been close to five in the morning by the time the body had been removed and everyone had left. Unfortunately the coffee wasn’t giving him the clarity he needed to follow T’Pol’s thoughts and by the look of her raised eyebrow she was frustrated by his lack of mental acuity. Good, so long as they were both frustrated–although she probably wasn’t frustrated in quite the same way or for quite the same reason as he was.

“Not entirely human,” T’Pol amended, cornering an evasive piece of her fruit salad with her fork. Fortunately, she missed the eye roll that accompanied her clarification.

“Oh, I see. Well, that makes more sense.” T’Pol paused her cantaloupe-laden fork in mid-air at his tone.

“Jonathan, can we deal with last night at another time?”

“I thought we were talking about last night,” he said innocently, munching on the last of his buttered toast.

“We were discussing the scan I made of Lily and her unborn child.”

“Exactly,” he said amenably. T’Pol fixed him with a stare but decided to take him at his word.

“The scan showed that the child was not entirely human.”

“T’Pol–”

“Lily was human, therefore the father must–”

“T’Pol, the scanner self-destructed right after you took those scans. Don’t you think that the most probable explanation is that it was faulty?”

“The scanner was not faulty.”

“Excuse me?”

“The scanner was not faulty,” T’Pol repeated firmly.

“Well, for a perfectly functional mediscanner it’s doing a great imitation of a paper weight.” Jonathan cleared the table, wondering all the while whether it was his mental acuity that was suffering or T’Pol’s.

“Considering the information contained in the scans, do you not find it suspicious that the scanner failed just as the Lieutenant was handling it?”

“No, I don’t,” he said, exasperated. “T’Pol, are you suggesting Alaia Naliek somehow made the mediscanner overheat? C’mon.” She didn’t have an answer. Feeling vindicated, he headed into the kitchen with the breakfast dishes that he was still holding. He was busy scraping the crumbs into the compost bin when T’Pol came up behind him to continue the conversation. Startled, he banged his head on the overhead cupboard and, cursing under his breath, turned on his former first officer.

“What?” He demanded, rubbing his head.

“I was simply pointing out that if the child is not entirely human and the mother is, then the parent who is not entirely human must be the father.” She waited patiently but received only a glare from Archer.

“If the father is not entirely human,” she continued, “and is the Lieutenant’s brother then it follows that the Lieutenant is not entirely human either.”

“Half-brother,” Archer corrected automatically. “You’re basing all of this on a scan done with a mediscanner that self-destructed for no reason.”

“Not entirely.” Archer waited expectantly for her to continue, but she was already leaving the room. He caught up to her as she entered her bedroom.

“What do you mean ‘not entirely’?” T’Pol activated the comm. After a moment a StarFleet logo appeared–more specifically Enterprise’s.

“What are you doing?”

“Testing a hypothesis,” she said as she waited for the call to go through. Turning to him she said, “I want to show you something, but in order to prove my theory I need a mediscanner.”

Seeing that he was still standing there, she told him to go get dressed.

“Mind telling me where we’re going?”

“Hiking,” she said as Phlox appeared on screen.

“Hiking,” he muttered to himself as he left the room. “Of course we are.” Porthos appeared from behind the couch with his leash in his mouth.

“Not you too,” Archer said. At the acknowledgement, Porthos barked once, dropping the leash at his master’s feet. Sighing, he picked up the leash and went to get dressed, followed by a wagging audience of one.

* * *

“Can you at least tell me where we’re going?” he asked, ducking a branch that snapped back as the result of T’Pol’s passage as she made her way along the overgrown pathway. She had refused to tell him where she was taking him, except that it was on Nutka Island. He had had just about enough of this as he picked wet leaves off of his jacket. He grabbed her shoulder spinning her around.

“I asked you a question,” he said evenly, trying to be as civil as possible.

“A cemetery.” Having answered the question she continued along the trail, hurrying now as the afternoon drizzle turned into a downpour. Jonathan Archer looked sourly at the sky, raindrops pelting his face.

“If you’re pissed at me too, get in line.” Having lodged his complaint with the powers-that-be, he followed T’Pol’s retreating form.

Their destination was a small clearing in the middle of the bush. It appeared to be maintained as the surrounding forest had not encroached on the clearing though it was artificial, and strewn with debris from the recent storm.

T’Pol began with the nearest grave marker and worked her way back, scanning as she went.

“What are we doing here, T’Pol?”

“Do you notice anything unusual about the grave markers?”

“No.” He was soaking wet and not in the mood for twenty questions.

“Look at the dates,” she said, moving further into the cemetery. It didn’t take him long to figure out what had attracted her interest the last time that she was here: according to the dates, the life spans of these people were extraordinarily long for humans, some of them stretching to 190 years.

Damn. Maybe the scanner hadn’t been malfunctioning after all. He looked up to see T’Pol focus her flashlight at the back of the clearing, illuminating two grave markers and shards of coloured glass. As they got closer he realised that the glass was actually the remains of candle holders. The base of one of the holders was intact, a lump of melted wax still fused to the bottom.

“Aren’t these like the ones Vorak was making?” he asked her, raising his voice to be heard over the rain.

“Yes,” she said, holding her scanner over the earth in front of one the markers.

“Looks like they didn’t survive the storm very well. What are we doing here anyway?” he asked as she continued her scans, frowning at the results.

“I am determining whether it is possible for a Human and a Vulcan to successfully produce offspring,” she said. He thought about telling her that he could think of more pleasant ways to test the theory but she appeared to be in the mood for neither humour nor the activities required for the experiment.

“What did you find out?” he asked crouching down beside her. He tried to look at the scan readout, but she had it set in pure data mode and he couldn’t make heads or tails of the DNA sequences scrolling past on the screen. He looked around, waiting patiently for her to finish. For the first time he noticed that the two grave markers were different than the others in the cemetery. The writing was streams of vertical scrawls like so many curled ribbons dangling from a stick: Vulcan.

“Do you know what that says?” he asked, interrupting her. She answered distractedly, having read it before:

“T’Nia, Daughter of T’Sai T’Alaia Adun Vorak and T’Dal Vorak Aduna T’Alaia. We Grieve For Thee, You Remain Forever in Our Hearts”

“What do those titles mean?” He wasn’t shouting now, since he was huddled right next to her shielding her and the scanner with his jacket so she could read it through the rain.

“T’Alaia, Life Partner of Vorak and Vorak, Life Partner of T’Alaia,” she said, then added,

“These readings don’t make sense.”

“Why, are they proving the Vulcan Science Academy wrong again?” She gave him a scathing look and he just shrugged his shoulders. The time travel thing was still a sore spot with her. “They indicate that the remains are of a 12 year old girl, deceased approximately 14 years.”

“Fourteen years? That can’t be Alaia’s child, she barely looks 30 years old herself!”

“Nevertheless, the remains are part Human and part Vulcan.”

“What about the other one?” He indicated the other marker with Vulcan markings. She let the scanner run for several minutes and then she started the scan again.

“What’s wrong?”

“The remains are of a new-born child–a boy. He died 33 years ago.” The scanner beeped as it completed its second scan. T’Pol looked at the scanner oddly. Seeing Archer watching her, she shook her head. Phlox would need to look at the readings to be sure.

“So the Vulcan Science Academy is wrong again,” he said diffidently.

“Jonathan, each of these graves contains the remains of–” she paused, searching for the right term.

“Remains of what?”

“Of not entirely human humans.” She got up and turned to leave, handing him the scanner on the way. A summary of the results was displayed on the screen; there were a number of scans, too many to look at now considering the weather. He stuffed the mediscanner in his pocket and hurried after T’Pol. He glanced back at the Vulcan grave markers. It was possible, after all.

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