Written for Get Trip into Trouble Month 2008. No beta on this one, so please excuse any mistakes!
Chapter 1
The throng of people stretched almost to the stall that sold the admission tickets. Voices filled the room, the unhappy squalling of infants, the excited chattering of the young ones, the quiet, admonitory replies of the adults. Towards the front of the crowd, the noises became subdued, turning into whispers and the occasional nervous laughter. Tails swished back and forth, neck hair bristled, small children demanded to be picked up; the braver ones for a better look, the more timid ones seeking the safety of their parents' arms. A daring she-child ventured forward, slipped under the barrier and knocked on the glass that separated the masses from the object of their curiosity. One of the security guards caught her and lifted her over the chain, depositing her in the arms of her waiting mother. Expectantly, the crowd stretched to see if there would be a reaction on the other side of the glass, but they were disappointed.
"No dawdling," the Chief Guard called, waving at the people filing past. "And please mind your children. We don't want to frighten it."
"Is it dangerous?" an elderly man wanted to know.
The Chief Guard laughed. "Not at all. It's probably more scared of you than you are of it."
"I'm not scared," the man muttered indignantly, and not quite truthfully, if his furtive glances at the window were any indication. But then, they were all scared, to some degree. They had never seen such a thing before.
Not that it looked particularly intimidating. In fact, as some of the children remarked, it was "cute", if such a term could be applied to a being as strange as this one. It was small; standing up, it barely reached the waist of a grown adult. Its limbs were delicate, with five knobby fingers on each end, and no claws. It had no tail either, and no teeth to speak of, only useless little stumps where rows of razor-sharp fangs should have been. Maybe it was sick, some of the adults speculated among themselves; its fur looked mangy and thin, except for the fuzzy, yellow patch on its head. Its face was round, pink and mostly furless as well, and its eyes were blue, or so the guards said. The crowd couldn't see for themselves. The being kept its head turned away most of the time.
The showing had been going on for six days, and if anything, the demand for tickets had increased. Some protested that a scientific discovery of such importance should not be used for profit, but no one really listened. People were willing to pay high prices to get a glimpse at the "space monster", as the yellow press unkindly titled it in their headlines. But it was not a monster, most agreed after their visit. Strange, yes, and a bit frightening in its differentness, but not the hideous, deformed creature they had expected. For double the price, visitors could watch when it was fed. A keeper in protective clothing would enter, walk over to the being (this always drew a gasp from the crowd) and set down a feeding dish filled with fruit and vegetables. People would wonder how the scientists knew what a being from outer space liked to eat, and the Chief Guard would explain that they had analyzed its feces, to find out what kind of diet it needed. "Feces?" a child had asked once, and the guard had pointed at a bucket in the corner of the tiled showing room.
"That's where it... you know."
The child had giggled.
More often than not, the being would not eat. Crouched in its corner, it kept its head turned away, ignoring the food and the expectant crowd outside. The keeper would wait for a while, then kneel down next to it, carefully take one of those pink, hairless arms and turn the being around. One of the keepers, made nervous by the audience, had become impatient when the being wouldn't touch the food. He had grabbed it hard and smacked it when it still refused to take a piece. The being had cried out, and the crowd had uttered a collective gasp of outrage. Only a short time later, the first demonstrators appeared in front of the building, demanding better treatment for "our alien visitor" and a letter of dismissal for the keeper. He was fired on the same day. After that, the designated caretakers took great pains to be gentle with their charge, coaxing it with endless patience to finish its meals.
The showing always ended an hour before sunset, because the being "needed its rest", as the guards would explain to the disappointed visitors. They did not say that the creature spent its "resting time" strapped to an examination table, that it often fell asleep only to be prodded awake again for more tests, that it sometimes screamed with pain and poured out words in its strange, high-pitched voice, those alien eyes filling with all-too-ordinary tears. The scientists didn't mean to hurt it; they simply didn't know enough about its physiology. An injection of apomorphine, intended to calm it down, caused several hours of uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea (and everyone agreed that the results had smelled worse than anything they had ever encountered in the lab). Afterwards, it lay panting on its blankets, shuddering convulsively from time to time. One of the younger assistants sat down next to it, stroking its spiky yellow fur and feeding it sips of water, the only safe antidote they could think of. Water always seemed to do it good.
It wasn't the most cooperative of study objects. It struggled when they tied it down, yanked at the straps, and snarled at the lab assistants. Once, it had escaped, running down the hallway with surprising speed. The Chief Guard had caught it, dragging it back to the lab and ignoring its noisy protests. After that, the Chief Scientist ordered that it was to wear leg restraints at all times, for its own safety, she said. If it got away, it might fall into the hands of the wrong people. After all, there were those who had called for its immediate destruction.
"What is it called?" the curious she-child, the one who had knocked on the glass, asked the guards. "Does it have a name?"
The Chief Guard's tail quivered in amusement. "We don't know. We can't ask it."
"Why not?"
"We don't speak its language," the guard answered. "We can't talk to it."
"Have you tried?" the child wanted to know, but her mother shushed her before she could say more.
"Quiet, little one. A child with too many questions is a child who does not get sweets for her evening meal."
Sulking, the she-child was pulled away. The guard looked after them thoughtfully. No, they hadn't tried. But what would a being so different, so alien, tell them? Only things no one wanted to know, tales of strange worlds and potential dangers out beyond.
No one wanted to hear such things.
"No dawdling," he called again, turning back to the crowd. "We're expecting another thousand visitors before closing time!"
"They call themselves the Nuwa..." The word ended in a strange combination of hissing and snarling. Hoshi smiled slightly. "At least that's the closest I can come to their pronunciation."
Malcolm looked at the image on the display. The species was humanoid, more or less, if one ignored the fact that the average adult was about four meters tall, covered in short, dark fur, and possessed fangs, claws and a tail. A very long, very bushy tail.
"Giant chipmunks," Travis commented, voicing Malcolm's first thought when he had seen the Nuwa-whatevers' backside appendage.
The Captain didn't seem amused. "What about their technology?"
"They are not warp-capable," T'Pol replied. "Their computer technology is rather advanced, as is their knowledge of science and medicine. They do not seem very interested in space travel, however. It is unlikely that they will develop impulse drive within the next century."
"Exploration isn't exactly frowned upon," Hoshi picked up again. "But they don't actively seek the unknown. A few centuries ago, xenophobia was still widespread in their culture. They fought three world wars over it."
Archer's face had settled into grim lines as he listened. "I take it first contact is out of the question."
T'Pol paused before she answered, and Malcolm suspected that she was trying to be as diplomatic as possible. "It would do great damage to their culture as it is now, Captain, and could possibly lead to a new war. The political situation is hardly stable."
Malcolm returned his attention to the display. The screen showed two images; the male and female Nuwa!r Hoshi had downloaded from the aliens' planetary database, and the ground structures of a city. One of the buildings on the map, a large compound from the looks of it, had been enlarged and highlighted red. If Hoshi's translations of the newspaper headlines were correct, Trip was being held somewhere inside the compound; and not only held, but displayed to the public like a curiosity at a zoo. Only that Trip was the only inhabitant of the zoo, and attracted a far greater crowd than polar bears or elephants. Which, unfortunately, complicated the tactical situation considerably. They couldn't get a transporter lock or even a bio sign, thanks to the aliens' technology interfering with Enterprise's scanning equipment. An armed rescue team would be the next option, but it was nearly impossible to stage a successful recovery operation if hundreds of curious aliens were crowded around Trip's... cage. It wasn't exactly a cage; on the news images Hoshi had downloaded, it looked more like a holding cell with a huge glass window where the forth wall would have been. The pictures weren't very good, but it seemed that Trip was okay, more or less. Or so Phlox said. Malcolm was only willing to believe what he saw with his own eyes, on one of the doctor's bio monitors. There could be injuries that didn't show on the surface.
They could have left him his clothes, he thought. Maybe the Nuwa!r's intentions weren't necessarily evil, only natural curiosity coupled with ignorance, but it should be obvious that the alien they had captured was a sentient being.
"So, what options do we have?" Archer sounded impatient. "We can't beam him out, we can't beam in, and we can't make our presence known. Although I'm not completely ruling out the last possibility." He held up a hand to forestall T'Pol's objections. "It's a last resort. But I won't wait much much longer."
Malcolm silently agreed, thinking of the news image again. Trip had been huddled in a corner, his knees drawn to his chest and his head averted from the crowd of spectators. Even if he was physically unharmed, that was not to say he was all right. They had to get him out of there.
Or, if they couldn't get him out...
"Captain," Malcolm said. "I'd like to make a suggestion..."
Trip was beginning to hate feeding time most of all. Not because of the crowd outside; they always stared, no matter what he did, and meal times were no different. No, he didn't mind their goggling eyes and excited pointing so much. If only the food hadn't tasted so damn disgusting. All his chipmunk keepers ever brought him was fruit and vegetables, and sometimes unidentifiable yellow... objects... that looked like bugs, of all things. Trip hadn't touched those, no matter how often the keepers dangled them enticingly in front of his nose. The other stuff was awful enough, thank you very much. Some of it was simply bland, like damp styrofoam; the rest left a vile taste in his mouth as if he had eaten, well, something one usually wouldn't even touch, let alone use for consumption.
A hand the size of a tennis racket prodded him, and Trip raised his head. The keeper was still kneeling in front of him, gesturing at the feeding dish he – or she - had set down on the tiled floor. At least there were no yellow bugs mixed in with the fruit this time.
"I'm not hungry," Trip said.
The keeper answered in his throaty, snarling language, his tail swishing back and forth.
"Sorry." Trip leaned back against the wall, careful not to look too closely at the disgusting contents of the dish. "That shot your doctors gave me last night musta messed with my stomach. I'm not feeling too hot today."
He couldn't really read the expressions on those large, hairy faces, but he had the distinct impression that the keeper was becoming impatient. The dish was pushed towards him, accompanied by more snarling and hissing.
Trip pushed it back. "Look, I don't want it! Understand? No!" He shook his head, rested one hand on his stomach and pulled a pained grimace. He didn't even have to pretend; his bowels felt as if he had downed a cup of bleaching agent.
His attempts at communicating seemed to confuse the keeper. He took a piece of fruit out of the bowl, holding it deftly between his large, clawed fingers as he brought it up to Trip's mouth.
Trip turned his head away.
The alien spoke again, his snarling beginning to sound annoyed. Trip withdrew further into his corner. The keeper who had slapped him hadn't returned, so he assumed that the aliens didn't want to see him abused. Still, facing a giant chipmunk was bad enough; facing an angry one would give anyone the heebie-jeebies.
The fruit was held in front of his mouth again.
"You guys don't know how to take a hint, do you? I said I-" The rest of his sentence was muffled by the fruit the keeper had quickly stuffed into his mouth. Trip gagged at the putrid taste, trying to spit out the offending item, but the keeper had one hand under his chin and another one clamped over his lips, effectively preventing him from opening his mouth. For lack of alternatives, Trip swallowed the fruit whole. The keeper let go of him and picked up another piece of fruit. The crowd cheered.
Having learned his lesson, Trip kept his lips firmly pressed together when the next lumpy, dripping piece was brought up to his face. His stomach was protesting noisily against the unwelcome nutrition, and it was all he could do not to vomit in front of the keeper's feet.
The alien said something, sounding amused.
Yeah, it's all a goddamn joke to you, isn't it, Trip thought, glaring at the large being even though he was pretty sure that it couldn't read his facial expressions any more than vice versa. You're not the one who spends his nights with probes stuck down his throat – or the other end – and I don't see you crapping into a bucket in front of a cheerful crowd. Kinda hard to see the funny aspects from this side of the microscope.
He would have liked to say all of that aloud, but he knew that if he opened his mouth, the fruit would be in there before he could say "unfair". Besides, there was little sense in talking to them. He didn't speak Chipmunk, and his attempts at non-verbal communication had passed without notice. Maybe they didn't even realize that he was sentient... or didn't want to realize it. Although his clothes and equipment should have been hint enough.
The alien reached for him, and Trip shrank back, but not in time to avoid the giant fingers pinching his nose shut. It was painful to say the least. And he couldn't breathe, not if he wanted to keep his mouth closed to avoid the food. His head buzzing from the lack of oxygen, Trip pulled weakly at the keeper's hand, which didn't budge one inch.
The alien seemed to be laughing, although Trip couldn't tell for sure. The faces around him were beginning to blur, merging into a mass of dark brown spots, and his mouth opened seemingly on its own, gasping for much-needed air. Instantly, the fruit was pushed into his mouth. It tasted of soap, metal and mouldy grass. Coughing and retching, Trip spat it out, missing the keeper's feet by mere centimeters.
"I said, I'm not hungry!"
He batted the alien's hands away, turning towards the wall. Before he averted his eyes, he saw that some of people outside had stopped laughing. Their expressions were serious, disapproving even. Always assuming that was he was seeing amounted to disapproval in giant chipmunks.
Good, he thought as he curled into a tight ball. Maybe the keeper would give up if the crowd was getting upset. He didn't think he could suppress his nausea any longer if he was fed another piece of fruit, and he didn't particularly want to puke all over the floor. Given his luck of late, they would find his response to be of scientific interest and would try to provoke the same reaction again, maybe by force-feeding him one of those yellow bugs. The mere thought made him shudder with disgust.
The keeper seemed to recognize a lost case when he saw one. Trip heard him getting to feet, and the sound of the door opening and closing. Now he would be left alone for another five or six hours, until the visitors went home and the assistants came to take him to the lab.
He closed his eyes. Enterprise had better get here soon.
TBC...
Please let me know what you think!
