The Third Way
Note: I swore off ENTERPRISE after the The
Andorian Incident and Breaking the Ice and then Djinn has to get me
thinking damn her! Thanks also go to her for a lightning quick beta.
Ë Ë Ë
To
be human is to choose. So says Commander Tucker. Such is not our way. No, that is not quite true. We can choose
but we have made the cost so high that is it easier to walk the path set for
us.
Yes,
T'Pol of Vulcan, you too can choose.
See here the level walk with signs every standard length. From here your destination is visible below.
If you stay on the path, there will be plenty before you to tell you of any
problems ahead. But of course there will not be any such problems for the road
has been paved smooth by the millions who have traversed it over the millennia.
You
do not have to tread that path. Others have strayed. But they have not left any
trace for their tracks have been carefully covered. You only know them by the
sudden silences, the name mentioned only to be quickly passed over, your
questions left unanswered.
Remember
Cousin Vanktet? A most promising scientist he was held out to you as a model.
Then one day you asked a question of mother to find he no longer existed. He
had not died, not become missing. Your mother and father simply professed to
not know of him when just a week before his findings regarding the Orion ruins
had been the subject of much discussion. When you looked up his paper in the
datanet, you found the article was now under another name. All reference to
Vanktet from his journal articles to his com code was gone. It is dangerous to
leave the path to wander into a trackless desert.
I
did not of course tell the commander the entire truth. I was...concerned he
would mention the savage alternative the Andorian alluded to. For though the
Andorian may have heard a corrupt version of our traditions he was not entirely
wrong. I could come to the ceremony
prepared to challenge. Assuming I could find a champion willing to fight and
kill for me. And whether he won or not I would become property for having dared
to challenge the marriage and then where would be my choices? The commander was
closer to the truth then he could possibly know when he spoke of slavery.
I
have chosen a third alternative. I can
postpone things further. It is not yet after all the time of madness, of pon
farr. Although...
I
suspect indeed that I am not the only one of this pair who is reluctant. There
have been times...periodically I have felt a disruption...a strong tug. I would
feel myself drawn to the place of marriage or challenge and yet not hear the
communication I expected. There were other telltale symptoms in my body but
muted in a very characteristic way.
It
is one way; a way of limbo that is made possible by our pride and our cultural
dictates that protect our privacy. He has simply diverted his passions
elsewhere—to some other willing person until he is ready to form a family. And
I will not question it. I will live in a limbo state without the marriage bond
or the family and the carefully banked passions we are allowed within it. I
will not be married nor will I divorce. But some measure of freedom I will
have.
This
is, in it's way, a very Vulcan way of choice. We are compared to most species
long-lived. It gives us patience. It is
the way of Moreek son pan, of the wind-with-the-sand, the way of Surak. We have
been accused of being a stubborn people. We do not oppose. We do not choose to
be an enemy. We do not change. We can instead just stand still and wait for
conditions around us to change. Who knows what may happen in the course of the
next few years?
So I will send a message and say I have obligations here. Worded carefully I can remind my fiance's family that haste is unseemly in a Vulcan and five or so years a small portion in the span allotted us.
I
feel a serenity steal over me that eluded me in meditation as I compose the
message. I do not know why this should be. There has not been a day on this
ship when I have felt real peace. Not a day when my assumptions have not been
disrupted, my loyalty challenged, and my every act questioned. And yet I found
myself...affected by the commander's pledge to keep my confidence. For the first
time, I felt uniquely visible—as if he at last saw me rather than a
representative of an entire people.
I
felt indeed a strange discomfort sitting today watching Archer and Captain Vanik.
An impatience with both of them, Human and Vulcan, so frozen in different kinds
of arrogance. And yet between the two it flashed through my mind that it was
Archer I would prefer to serve with. For Archer is capable of learning while so
many of us have come to believe we have already learned all that we need.
I
am no longer of that mind. I am Vulcan and I value my heritage. I am not of a
mind to change. I do not know if I there is anything I can bring back to Vulcan
from what I learn among the humans. It is simply that I no longer assume that I
know there is not.
I
wonder what they would make of it if I told them I have stopped taking the odor
suppressant. It is not so much that the human smell is so noxious as that it is
so strong. We are not used to dealing with intensity. Colors, sounds, odors,
tastes...emotions. Ah yes now that I've stopped taking the suppressant the
tastes are so much stronger. I have started sampling some human food. I am not
sure yet what to make of it. I believe it's an acquired taste.
Please write to me and
let me know what you thought.