Transitional State

 

By Rabble Rouser

 

DATE:  October 21, 2001

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to Djinn for a quick lookover.

 

Note: Written as a coda to the Enterprise episode “Unexpected” Contains spoilers.

 

 

 

v v v

 

 

“Where no man has gone before,” someone whispered and snickered.  Trip spun around and clenched his fist to keep himself from pounding it on the nearest bulkhead. He hadn’t recognized the voice and the acoustics in the shuttle pod hanger made it hard to place.  Everybody was ostensibly working hard at their stations with their noses so close to the panels they could polish the surface with it. He felt his face go red and turned away to the wall.

This clenched it. There was no way T’Pol wasn’t responsible for this. Word couldn’t have possibly gotten around from that little scene on the bridge this quickly. He was appalled to find himself close to tears. “Volatile” was he? Well, she hadn’t seen nothing. When he got back from the Zirillian ship.… He felt a hand on his shoulder and flinched like someone had run an electric shock through him.

“My word, Commander, you’re jumpier than a bride,” said Reed.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Shouldn’t that be bridegroom?” He would prefer Travis to take him over; the dour Reed didn’t inspire confidence. Trip ran his hand through hair damp with sweat. Ever since Phlox had made the diagnosis, there had been a part of him inside screaming. Not safe to remove it because it was too “integrated with his pericardium?” Then how could it be safe to “deliver it?” He had looked the medical term up not sure Phlox would give him a straight answer. The pericardium was the thin membrane surrounding the heart. This could not be good. “Why does everyone think this is such a big joke? Or at least the occasion for really lame humor?” Trip asked.

“Would you prefer hearty congratulations and a baby shower?” Reed asked dryly.

“I would prefer not having the news greeted with guffaws, snickers, hiding of laughter behind hands and what passes for Vulcan humor. Can we get started here please?” Trip walked into the shuttle pod and tried not to feel too much hope. Only a week into this “gestation” with five supposedly to go the captain had told Phlox to start checking him every eight hours. He felt a sharp, piercing pain in his chest if he took a deep breath. And now a dull ache in his neck and shoulder had begun.

He hoped the preflight check would keep Reed too busy to chat. On the other hand, maybe it was for the best Travis was up on the bridge. Knowing him, the boomer would be filled with questions Trip didn’t really want to answer.

“You know, sir, sometimes people use humor to whistle in the dark and keep horror away.” In Reed’s voice he heard something he hadn’t expected from the man and had gotten precious little of―sympathy. “I can assure you that Subcommander T’Pol and I have been taking this very seriously.”

“I knew it! She promised she wouldn’t say a word to anyone. I should have known a Vulcan’s promise isn’t worth the breath it’s spoken into.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions, Commander. Something that in light of recent events I would think you would refrain from.”

“Then how did you know!” Trip demanded.

“Really, sir. I saw that―growth―on your arm that you’re trying to hide with a bandage and told you to go to the Doctor. Not long after I’m on the bridge when Phlox calls to say you have a ‘delicate condition’ and asking the Captain and T’Pol to come to sickbay. The captain comes back as white and stiff as marble and tells me to work with T’Pol on finding the Zirillians. Meanwhile this week you go around in civvies with your shirt untucked and acting broodier than a hen with one chick. You’ll be relieved to know however that the rumor was that you had alien clap. No one guessed you were pregnant, well, until recently.”

Trip felt more irked than relieved to find out he was wrong. He had been so sure. “What gave me away?”

“You were muttering the most extraordinary things under your breath I understand. So how does it feel to make history as the first human male to get pregnant?”

Trip gave Reed a sharp look. “Pregnant? More like invaded. A host for who knows what.” His research on male pregnancies in nature hadn’t been too reassuring. More than a few ended with the host being eaten alive by the young. He guessed that in that sense the appearance of nipples should be reassuring. Surely he was supposed to be alive “post-natal” if he had to nurse the thing? But, after all, by definition a male’s body wasn’t designed for this.

Given her hourglass shape it looked like Ah’len was formed for just the thing. Hell, if she didn’t carry the baby, or nurse it, and she did the impregnating―then what exactly did that make her? Female? In what sense? What was he doing deposited with the thing? Thinking along these lines was making him queasy. Hormones, hell! He didn’t need raging hormones to be going out of his mind.

Trip saw Reed’s lack of expression and felt irritation rise. “It’s *not* my kid. Phlox says there’s none of my genetic material in there. I don’t know why anyone expects me to feel any parental instincts stirring here. The captain and doctor seem to think I should be starting a nursery in engineering.” Or worse, which he didn’t want to think about―leave the ship to raise this cuckoo chick. He hadn’t asked for this. He didn’t want to think about it too much. Didn't want to think about the sacrifices his own mother had made—sacrifices he'd taken for granted.

“So,” Trip asked, “I suppose everyone’s assuming I got knocked up the good old fashioned way?” He gave Reed a sidelong look and wasn’t reassured by the way the lieutenant chose that moment to fuss over the controls. Trip thought this was one question Reed obviously didn’t want to answer. “Cause it wasn’t like that. Ah’len didn’t warn me that putting my hands in a box full of pebbles was their version of making a home run.”

“Ah...well rather par for the course I think for these people. After all, the Zirillians make it a practice to sneak up to ships and disrupt their systems while siphoning off plasma exhaust without a by your leave. Pretty creepy if you ask me. I actually have much more sympathy for the Klingon point of view on this matter then the captain’s. I wouldn’t exactly call what they did to either of our ships―or you―harmless.”

Trip felt surprised to feel a smile spread over his face. Despite what had happened, he still felt―well “awe” was the best word for what he had felt on that ship. “It was just a ship of wonders you know. Grass growing on the decks, sweet fruit growing from the bulkhead, ‘water’ that left a strange tingle going down, a tank with these eel-like creatures. You can tell the Zirillian’s moods through the changes in the color of their scales. Technology that can make you think you’re on the ocean and a box of pebbles that for a while made me feel like a telepath. Magical.”

Reed gave a skeptical grunt. “That’s where a little paranoia can be helpful. I’m not a trusting bloke. But you know I do trust T’Pol.”

“I don’t understand why. Doesn’t the very fact that she’s still in a Vulcan uniform tell you anything?”

Reed shook his head. “What is it about Vulcans and Humans? Why do we forget when we’re around them that logic and reason are human too? Why is it necessary to express our emotions at a hysterical pitch around them? It reminds me of a teenager so shrill in insisting he’s an adult that his parents are all the more impressed he still belongs in the playroom.”

“I got precious little understanding from her. She was determined to see me in the worse possible light. She was so sure I couldn’t keep my pants zipped. Even before what happened in that cavern, she’s too damn quick to dismiss any observation by humans as all in our ‘imagination.’ Too damn quick to dismiss us period.”

“Did you know T’Pol hasn’t slept or eaten in a week from what I can tell? She’s been working around the clock searching for that ship. While you were enjoying the chef’s cooking, she was up on the bridge searching. I come back after a sleeping period or break or meal and she’s there with hours worth of new leads for me to follow up. And in case you didn’t notice,it was she who talked the Klingons into letting us visit that ship.” Reed jerked his head to indicate the Zirrilian ship coming into view. “Thanks to her there’s hope Doctor Phlox won’t get to run his little experiment in interspecies gestation to the bloody end. I’ll take that kind of demonstration of caring over tea and sympathy any day. Why are you so determined to see no good in her people?”

“They had Warp Five technology. They had it ninety years ago and all they’d give us were enough hints dropped every few years to keep our appetite whetted.” Reed, Trip thought bitterly, hadn’t been there while Henry Archer struggled to find the solutions to the last few intractable problems so he could see his engine fly before he died.

“So they didn’t give away their knowledge with an open hand. Why should they? What have we ever done to earn their respect and trust? The courts of the post-atomic horror met within Ambassador’s Soval’s lifetime. The Vulcans witnessed them first-hand. They were still up and running over a decade after First Contact. I’d be wary of putting that kind of power in the hands of people up to that kind of brutality so very recently. Yet even you admit they dropped a trail of breadcrumbs.”

“You make it sound like they were doing us a favor. We don’t owe them a thing.”

“Granted. We owe them very little. We are not much in their debt for warp technology. But in the end did they really ever keep us from finding our own answers? Enterprise is ours. We made her. The day will come when we can stand by their sides as equals. And in any case ‘they’ are not T’Pol. I thought we Humans were leaving that sort of rubbish behind when we decided we’d reach for the stars together.”

Trip moved uncomfortably in his seat and thought about how fast he had slipped back to his rooted way of thinking time and again. “I can’t change everything I’ve believed and felt for years by pressing a button,” he finally answered. “It’s not that easy or that quick.”

“Neither I dare say can she. It will take a while I think for that chick to hatch.” Trip scowled at Reed. “Er...Sorry, sir.” And Reed turned his attention to docking the pod while Trip found he had something else now to brood about.

 

 

The End

 

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