"Ssh, child, sshh" the voice was talking and yet not talking. It was piercing her head. The pain was all-encompassing and she tried to shrink away from it.
"Ssh, it will pass. Everything passes." T'Pol came to with a start, staring into the old woman's eyes. Where was she? She looked at the boughs around, she had no idea. Then it slowly came back to her, groggily. She was helped to a sitting position by Elderweiss, and immediately retched, even though there was nothing left to expulse. Her head was swimming yet she couldn't remember being sick. Of course not, she hadn't been sick, it was the brew that precipitated this intense reaction.
She grabbed her head with both hands, rocking herself back and forth in an attempt to quell the pain, to stave off the nausea. She knew already it wouldn't make a difference, nothing would, until the toxins from the decoction leached out of her system. She fell on her side, rolled into a fetal ball, while Elderweiss gnarled hands awkwardly patted her back, her face a mixture of compassion and sorrow. How she would that the young alien not suffer so from the tribal obligation. That she find the I'Ph'Lis an inconvenience, like they all did, rather than this bottomless abomination.
Elderweiss sat back on her heels, considering. It could be that the young one would never develop a tolerance for the drink and that her life energy would slowly ebb away, like it had with the other aliens. Some like her and some unalike. And yet there was no choice. To protect the tribe, they all had to take the sweet nectar. It was the V'Bu'Rwe tree and the G'Qe'Nkaa root that kept them safe, thickets of growth protectively muting their psi waves from the roaming hunters. Only in I'Hy'Iuvh did the V'Bu'Rwe trees grow to the sky in towering boughs, the G'Qe'Nkaa tightly wrapped around their upward thrust. It had to do with the mountains in the East, and the prevailing winds, and this being a deep valley right before the peaks, ever wet from clouds torn anew, tall from being inhospitable. Only the tribe lived there, unknown, unfound, and carefully hidden, telepathic from mother to child, their ranks swelled every so often by those of the hunted as managed to escape. Sometimes even aliens like the young one or others whose skin held the blue of precious stones. But the I'Ph'Lis and the wet did away with them all.
Elderweiss sighed. Her eyes and the mottled yellow on her skin had grown white with age, and still the tribe had to remain hidden. From the long line of Elderweisses before her, she knew of a time when the Sighting Ones roamed the surface of Y'Cr'Stea, at one with the hunters, hordes of proudly mottled bronze bodies and yellow eyes, when being a thought-reader was not the judge of an I'Shlin's character. Every Elderweiss once matriarch of the tribe dreamed of a future like the past, when they would walk again freely with their hunter brethren, unthreatened by them, when they would leave I'Hy'Iuvh and feel the suns of Y'Cr'Stea on their skin, and the winds in their manes. How she wished the I'Ph'Lis was but a memory of the morrows, a time when the Sighting Ones would no longer have to touch skin in order to know one's thoughts, when they could take pride in their Sighting, when thought-reading was no longer a source of shame. And death.
She sighed again. If she only could, she would dispense the young one, how could a lone alien with limited Sighting threaten the entire tribe? Would it be that all of them didn't have to drink the I'Ph'Lis. But beyond her compassion at seeing the young one so stricken, and the alien's physical and psychical pain, there was the health and survival of the tribe. She was the Elderweiss, the Mother to all of them. She could not choose. She could no lighten the hand of tribal law for they were all equal in their desolation.
For desolate was their plight. They had forsaken any claim to what by right should have been theirs, the cities and the amenities that the hunted ones brought back in the folds of their memories, before the I'Ph'Lis stranded them in a present without past and without future. That was its purpose, to bind psionic receptors, sever telepathic connections, and reduce memories to a dream-like state. Everything they had been, everything they had known would disappear in the fog of the before and the after. Nobody ever came out of I'Hy'Iuvh, not so much because of the hunters, but because they had lost the path that would take them home.
As Elderweiss, she held the collective of the tribal memory, carefully handed down generations, to be kept whole and safe until one day the Sighting Ones walked free again. As Elderweiss, she alone could remember. With great sorrow. A sorrow that wouldn't be the tribe members'. The young one too, if she survived, would know the simple happiness of days without past and without future.
The Elderweisses before her had taught her about glorious times when the Sighting Ones could mind-talk across land and space. Before the Great Catastrophe. The arrogance of their forebears, trying to dominate the Unsighted Ones. Until Sighting became a curse and the Sighting Ones became the hunted, to find refuge in I'Hy'Iuvh with its standing groves of ancient V'Bu'Rwe trees. Only later did they realize how the G'Qe'Nkaa worked with the V'Bu'Rwe. And later still, did they decide to retreat further into safety and mix the bark of the V'Bu'Rwe with the roots of the G'Qe'Nkaa to brew the I'Ph'Lis. That was their weapon against sorrow and against the hunters, its purpose to dampen the telepathic centers, unravel the close ties that bound them to their past, dull the sharpness of the Sighting, so that they could mind-talk only if touched. The young alien hard argued that, logically, the hunted were safe in I'Hy'Iuvh, there was no need or reason to take the decoction and add to the vegetal protection. When had it been decided that it was necessary to ingest it? She knew not. But drink it they must. And they would. It would not be said that Elderweiss was the one who put the tribe at risk
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T'Pol felt Elderweiss pat her back again. The physical contact of the old woman's hand was all she felt. There was no accompanying psionic reverberation, nothing to let her know it was Elderweiss, other than the elder sitting with her in miserable companionship. The repeated patting was not the emotional infringement it should have been, there was no mental contact to be shied from, no vibration from another mind carefully held at bay behind her shields. The absence of psionic presence was obscene, something that was and should not be. It amplified the gut wrenching of the drink they forced on her, sharpened the nausea from psi points dampened into a dull ache. Without the familiar echo of the psionic readings, the world was flat, she was adrift, there were no moorings.
Elderweiss had talked of developing a tolerance to the strange potion, but Vulcan physiology was not I'Shlin. The I'Shlin's abilities were easily re-routed through other systems, finding a reduced expression in touch-telepathy. Vulcan psionic abilities started at touch-telepathy, their psiothonic receptors were part of the synaptic regime, the careful scaffolding that structured emotional suppression and allowed higher cortical functions, the laddering that enabled meditation. Without the familiar echo of her psionic bearings she would sink, overcome by emotional distress and unable to claw her way to the light of logic. The I'Ph'Lis was an attack against the mind, leaving her naked before life.
It reminded her of the Expanse, of the Selaya, of the trellium. Unlike the trellium, the I'Ph'lis did not bring paranoid hyper-awareness, instead dampening her connections to the outside world, hiding things behind a cotton-like layer so that they were half-seen and reality lost its cohesiveness. Back in the Expanse there had been Trip, Trip to help her weather the synaptic storms. Here she had nothing. Had Trip been real? His existence itself seemed to dissolve into the haze of dreams. Could someone really have hair that yellow? Or was it the yellow eyes of the I'Shlin her mind had transformed. What did he even look like? She wasn't sure she remembered. The drink erased the bond, leaving her alone with an aloneness she had never felt. An aloneness worse than that of a month helmeted in the hold of her ship's abductors, where even if she could not mind-touch the outside world, she could still sense her own self. The I'Ph'Lis ripped away at the psionic foundations, poisoned her soul and left her adrift in a world where memories may not have been and surroundings may not have shape.
She gathered her limbs into a tight ball, trying to compensate with physical contact the abject sense of loss, the feeling perhaps she was not there. Her fingers could feel the uniform that was mostly tatters now, holding because there was no choice. But without her mind to reassure its contours, how could she know where she ended and where the outside world started? Her hair had grown shaggy over her eyes. How long had it been? Was it the rain drumming on the boughs overhead? How could she know for sure? Without the reassuring confirmation of the mind, it could be so many other things. How could she tell what was real anymore? Devoid of the profile of psionic recognition, everything held the same flatness.
The first time had been the worst, not knowing what to expect. She shuddered at the memory, shuddered at the fact she was shuddering, closing her eyes in bitter defeat. That was another effect of the drug, overfilling the psionic points and preventing emotional suppression. What good was she if she couldn't suppress her emotions? Even that was rank emotionalism. She took a deep breath, trying to soothe the turbulence of her mind, to come back to a rational point, a logical suite, a framework she could grab onto while the psiothonic storm worked its dark magic. This was her third time of I'Ph'Lis. She knew from previous times that the initial couple of days would be the worst, making her want to retreat into a mental place without pain, if she could only find one. She was not developing a tolerance. She would survive this time also, that was clear then slowly she would find that she could meditate again, until she was back within herself and Elderweiss came to tell her they had to start again. She rested her head on her knees, a buzzing sound in her ears.
And then suddenly she was in the past, back to the first day when the I'Shlins had found her, when they had brought her to Elderweiss, she felt the weight of the knife in the elder's hand, before she proclaimed her one of them. The Sighting Ones they called themselves, no different than the hunters other than their ability to mind-read. The hunters were mistaken, trying to prevent a genetic variance through genocide. They were all part of the same. Her touch-telepathy had kept her safe, she saw Elderweiss approving, the knife lowering.
She had drunk the thin gruel they handed her, too tired and famished to hesitate. She had awakened from a tortured nightmare, flames in her eyes and in her brains, holding on to her skull lest it would split, hardly able to stand up. The guards had grabbed her and dragged-walked her to a clearing, the entire tribe following, stopping and waiting whenever the guards let her retch by the side. Remnants of the rain were dribbling on the leaves of the trees, collecting on the spongy moss under her feet. Elderweis was there, standing on a tree trunk, the entire tribe had sunk like one to the ground and she was standing alone in front of the ancient alien, the noise in her head drowning any coherent thought. Yellow eyes were lighting the forest around her. Was it some sacrificial ceremony?
There was a sudden seesawing in her head, before she realized the tribe was rubbing rough sticks against the bark of some trees. Insects danced all around her, in vain, her blood was uncooperative. Wet drops dripped from the leaves above, smacking the spongy soil in unheard drops. Except she heard them all, each drop louder than the last. She heard the rubbing of the wings on the insects all around, she heard the breaths of the birds up high, she heard the hearts of all of those in the tribe beating a three prong chant. She heard the air they inhaled, she heard the blood dilating their vessels, brushing through their veins. She thought she would go mad. There was too much to hear. Elderweiss came over and grabbed her by the neck again, chanting unknown words, the images speeding through T'Pols mind which were not her memories, which were not of her world, or of any world she knew. Elderweiss asked a question and the tribe replied. T'Pol waited for the mortal blow. The old one asked another questioned and the tribe replied again, beating the soft ground with their hands and feet. The noise would drive her mad.
And suddenly there was silence.
An ethereal silence that stretched and enveloped the world, wrapping the noisemakers into yards of downy hush. She was at a great distance. Her mind was wrapped in shadows. She could no longer sense the tribe, now graven images. The old woman spoke directly in her mind. "You are one of us now. The I'Ph'Lis will keep you safe." The sound was clear and ringing in her head. But it was only sound, there was no mind-echo. The tribe members approached her, one by one, each laying a hand and talking their welcome in her mind. Drinking the I'Ph'Lis was a time of joy and tribal bonding. For them.
T'Pol came back to the present when she felt Edelweiss leave the hut, did not unclench her hands from where they were holding her head, rocking in a vain attempt to hold onto herself.
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From the Vulcan database
I'Ph'Lis is an anatheic potion made from the bark of the V'Bu'Rwe trees. I'Ph'Lis primary action is to halt telepathic communication, both expressive and receptive. It prevents meditation and reduces memories to a dream-like state. The potion becomes orally active when the bark of the V'Bu'Rwe tree is mixed with roots from the G'Qe'Nkaa liana.
Chemically, the V'Bu'Rwe tree relies on the SNR molecule. SNR can reduce memories to imagined hallucinations. SNR has a long duration, intense effects and rapid onset. When SNR is inhaled or injected, the effects last about 5 days. Effects can last up to a week or longer when orally ingested along with an NQIU. NQIUs are a class of psiothonic blockers that have a long history of use in intelligence warfare.
Psiothonic blockers are a class of drug whose primary action is to block telepathic experiences via psiothan (a compound present in blood platelets and serum that serves as a psionic transmitter) receptor agonism (the combining of a chemical substance with a specific receptor on a cell thereby initiating the same reaction or activity typically produced by the binding of an endogenous substance). This modifies the consciousness of telepathic species and depresses psionic receptors and sensors, causing the loss of psionic abilities and a reduced state of memory recall.
G'Qe'Knaa rely on NQIUs, a class of drugs that inhibit the reception of telepathic activity, and EUNAs, a subclass of NQIUs. EUNAs selectively and reversibly inhibit the NQIU-R-B enzyme. This inhibition of NQIU-R-B allows SNR to diffuse unmetabolized past the membranes in the stomach and small intestine, and eventually cross the blood–brain barrier to desactivate receptor sites in the brain. NQIUs bear the possibility of psiothonic toxicity and their use must be strictly controlled.
The ingestion of I'Ph'Lis can cause significant, but temporary, emotional and psychological distress and can trigger a psiothonic storm, though some natural tolerance to habitual use of I'Ph'Lis may develop.
A psiothonic storm is a group of symptoms that may occur following use of certain psiothonergic (denoting a nerve ending that releases and is stimulated by psiothan) drugs. The degree of symptoms can range from mild to severe. Symptoms include cold sweats, headaches, dizziness, vomiting, prostration. Complications may include meningitis and extensive muscle breakdown.
35% of Vulcans will experience psiothonic syndrome with the ingestion of NQIUs.
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