Chapter 28
The Identity of Hannah Lee
She walked in with defiance. Her head was thrown back. The sweep of her hair, still neatly coiled at the back of her head, and her posture struck a cord of strength. It reminded one of the prow of a ship, gallantly braving a storm at sea. Finally, she had dispensed with some of her unyielding stoicism. She was magnetic. In that moment, for the first time, Plormot saw her as beautiful.
Her eyes swept over Reed for a moment, but only a moment, before they locked onto him.
"You wished to see me?"
"Please sit. I wished to ask you, Miss, why you lied to us this morning?"
"Lied to you. When?"
"You lied about never having met Lieutenant Keller before, although I imagine you might view it as a matter of word play, given that this isn't Lieutenant Keller at all, but Malcolm Reed, your longtime colleague." Her eyes shot over to Reed for a split second before she reined them in and dragged them back to Plormot's face.
"You concealed the fact that, at the time of the Archer Affair, you were actually living at the house. You concealed the fact that you were Daisy Archer's tutor. You concealed the fact that your true name is Hoshi Sato, a longtime trusted officer to Jonathan Archer, and friend to the family." Plormot saw her briefly flinch at her name before recovering.
"Yes," she said. "That is true."
"So you admit it?"
"Certainly, since I can't very well hide it once the phal clears."
"I should thank the phal, then. You are at least honest and forthright now, Miss Sato."
"I don't see that there's anything else for me to be." She couldn't know this, but Plormot was reminded of earlier that morning, when he had noted to her that she was the only calm one. What had she said, then? 'What can one do.'
"Well, of course. Now, Miss Sato," Plormot hurried on, wary of squandering the progress he'd made. "What is the reason for these evasions?"
"There isn't any one reason."
"Enlighten me as to one of them for starters, then."
"It's a private matter." Plormot felt his patience slipping.
"Be that as it may, you must enlighten me."
She raised her dark eyes to meet his.
"How much do you know about starting over, Mr. Plormot? I've kept my identity private from you because I can't afford another setback in my career. If I were to be detained in connection with a murder case, if my name and my face were to be plastered all over the news, do you think just any place would take me on? To hire me?"
"I imagine they would, given your connections." That elicited a laugh from her. It was bitter.
"Connections? What connections? My captain is dead, along with the other senior officers. Dead people can't write your letters of reference, and pity points will only get you so far."
"Still, I do not see why someone of your background could not return, if no blame was attached to you." She shot him a look of distaste, as if it were a great task, having to explain something so simple to someone so simple.
"It isn't a matter of blame! It's publicity. So far, Mr. Plormot, I have succeeded in life. I started off terrified and naive. There was no way I'd go jetting off into space. But I'd been hailed as a genius and Jonathan always had the ability to convince me. In the end, he convinced me to 'try it out.' Eventually, I worked to build up a reputation to back it all up. I ended up enjoying it, actually." She trailed off suddenly, leaving a yawning silence. Plormot carefully watched as Keller – no, Reed – casually crossed his leg, bumping her foot. She jolted out of her confused distraction and refocused.
"Anyway, it hardly matters anymore. It's all gone." Plormot hadn't known she was capable of sounding sullen, but here she was, looking like a young teenager more than anything. Suddenly moody and slouching.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean..." she trailed again, seemingly lost again. "I mean I'm not the same anymore. I've been trying to get back to what I once had, but it's been looking more and more hopeless, as time goes by."
Silence stretched again until Reed shifted ever so slightly and muttered to her:
"He asked about blame."
Reminded of Plormot's prompt, she recollected herself and started again.
"It isn't a matter of blame. As I told you before, those words refer to something else. Something unrelated to what happened to Daisy."
"If not related to Daisy, then is it related to this crime?"
"No, no, not really..." Another awkward silence ensued while she tried to organize her thoughts. When she glanced to the phal swirling beyond the porthole, the light managed to illuminate her face just enough. Plormot saw that, again, her pupils had grown uneven. Plormot stole a look over to Reed. His posture showed attentive concern, but no surprise or confusion over her state.
"My question from earlier," Plormot started again, gently. "Regarding your neurological condition?" And like a whip, he was rewarded with two sets of close-set eyes.
"It's true," Sato slumped a little more. "I was never quite the same after the Xindi War. At first, we thought everything was fine, that I just needed to recover for a week or so. And T'Pol worked with me to get a handle on it. She always was a great mentor, as much as she would dismiss my saying so...
"I deployed for the Romulan front. Things with me were normal. But then it got worse again. It didn't seem to matter how much I meditated, or how closely I adhered to operating procedures. I heard things that - that weren't there. I'd encrypt things with the wrong encryption codes, I'd report to duty at the wrong times. I became enraged at nothing, but I was utterly unfeeling when I was supposed to be afraid or grieving. I had strange swings in my ability. My efficiency dropped, and my rate of errors went up. I started making weird errors.
"It … it cost us lives. And the Captain said I was no longer fit for duty." Misery and shame welled up in her and she grew still while Reed shifted next to her. When she started again, her voice had gone hoarse.
"He decided that I should take a sabbatical. I went to tutor the kids on a more permanent basis. Phlox was researching a more permanent solution for me. He felt guilty for not magicking up some miracle cure to start with. I was stabilizing, and the Captain said if Phlox could fix me then I'd have my old commission. But then," she took a shuddering breath. "Daisy. And Phlox. And all the rest."
"Those appointments you mentioned waiting for you once you return to Federation space?" Plormot asked. She shrugged noncommittally.
"They always think they've found some way to permanently fix it. Fix me, I mean. They say it's for real this time. Not that I'm holding my breath."
"You can't think like that," Reed offered to her. She didn't bother looking at him. Empty eyes reflected the phal.
"It's been over five years, Malcolm. Even if they do manage to fix me, has Starfleet ever reinstated anyone's commission after a five, six year gap since they last saw service?" She looked back at Plormot. Whatever unsteadiness that had hit her seemed to have receded again. She turned to Plormot.
"That's why I'm working and traveling under a different name. I'm no longer as reliable. On the off-chance I'm miraculously cured, I won't have ruined my work history with my - with my being me."
"And you, Lieutenant Reed? Why do you travel under an assumed identity?"
He shrugged. "Same reason, really. A job went pear-shaped, I was injured." He saw Plormot's self-satisfied grin at having earlier guessed. "Get over it, I'm fully recovered, now."
"You say 'a job' went wrong. This job sounds dangerous."
"Something like that," Reed said vaguely, his attention now latched onto Sato's fidgeting. The vagueness piqued Plormot's interest and he could not bring himself to deny it, given the progress they were making.
"So you are no longer employed by Starfleet?"
"I am, actually. It's all a bit confusing what with overlapping branches of service and conjoined mission objectives and all that."
"You return to Earth, then?"
"Temporarily."
"And then?" He shrugged, still observing the fidgeting beside him.
"I go back to work."
"For whom?" The question brought that flinty stare zeroing back in on Plormot's face.
Again, Plormot was suddenly back at the Tokatlian Hotel, brushing ever so close to danger. At the Tokatlian, Plormot had an overwhelming sense of mortal danger from a monster lurking nearby. This time, he reviled at his curiosity. He had been treading on ice, and not noticed it grow thinner and thinner.
Now, he felt certain he had unwittingly cornered something dangerous in a place it didn't want to be. Maybe it was over-philosophical of him to debate such a distinction, but he almost preferred being stalked by a monster over crossing one and being perceived as a threat. Gone was the boring, rigid discipline. Plormot gazed into the soul of something cunning that, at its core, was untamed.
How to extricate himself?
"I am astonished," Plormot commented mildly. "The both of you travel under false pretenses, the both of you travel with false passports. How am I to reconcile such a fact?"
Again, Reed shrugged.
"That's up to you. For what it's worth, it's common practice. It's actually become something somewhat close to being sanctioned in some circles, albeit unofficial.
"Common practice? How?"
"Over seven million people were killed in the Xindi attack. The Xindi War and it's aftermath added to the death count. The Romulan War has been picking off people as we speak. When someone dies, they leave behind their social security numbers, national id numbers, credit histories and the like." He shot Plormot a look.
"No one's saying it's a good thing to travel under a different identity, but millions of people suddenly don't need theirs anymore, so it happens. Anyway, you can have those passports checked, they aren't fake. They're real. Belonged to real people. So we aren't in violation of the Trans-Federate Accord of Diluvh, Section 184, Paragraph B." Reed had rattled off the explanation as though he were describing how to tie a shoe when he stopped short.
"Actually, it's meant to stay something of an unofficial secret, since these passports have nothing to do with the murder. If you catch my meaning." Plormot marveled at the man's gall. Here he sat, a suspect of murder, and he so casually tells the investigator to keep confidence in their concealed identities.
"How can I be certain they don't?"
"Perhaps you can't be, but nonetheless, they don't."
"Miss Sato," Plormot switched tracks.
"There remains the fact that you could have helped me in the matter of identification."
"What do you mean?"
"Is it possible, Miss Sato, that you did not recognize Countess Kyrth, as your former student whom you taught in New York, Talla Shran?"
"Countess Kyrth?" She shook her head. "No. She confused me when I saw her, that's true, but I assumed I was seeing things, a neurological episode. I knew her when she was a child. I last saw her when she was a teenager, over three or four years ago, now. Why would I connect her to the little girl I taught years ago? Besides, I had my own preoccupations." Preoccupations.
"You still have not told me the meaning behind those words, Miss. You will not tell me your secret? About your decision on whether you would undertake some task?" He knew he was close to something, but the answer, the true and complete answer, was just out of sight.
"I – I don't." She blinked rapidly at the phal. "It's to do with… with whether I…" And then, without warning, she broke down and sobbed into her hands. The cool, meticulous, even ruthless aura he'd perceived from her had evaporated before their eyes. No wonder vulcans found humans so unsettling. Were all humans {roller coasters,} waiting to dizzy some poor alien with flights of inconsistency?
Humans could learn clinical behaviors, as evidenced by the two in front of him, but Plormot spent the day watching as the two untethered their emotions to reveal how mercurial and tumultuous they could be. At one time, Plormot had likened the woman to a sentient machine, and considered the man to be boring and straightforward. The tin woman had emotions, it turned out, and he watched as the man proved to be anything but.
The lieutenant sprang up and awkwardly stood beside her, his hand caught inches from her shoulder. He seemed afraid to touch her, so he torturously mimed patting her shoulder.
"Hoshi – I – look here..." He cut himself short and rounded on Plormot, his posture flaring. He snarled: "I'll break every bone in your damn body, you nasty little cretin." Then, he turned back again to Sato.
"Hoshi, please just … well, breathe?" He trailed lamely, still hovering a hand a couple of inches away. It seemed he couldn't decide between attempting to comfort Sato or go after Plormot. She took the decision out of his hands, however, by getting to her feet, wiping her eyes.
"It's nothing." A brief look passed between the two, and Plormot again felt he was ever so close to the answer to that conversation. There was some simple answer that would solve the whole mystery behind that conversation, but he was being left out, which he hated. She was wiping her eyes, now. "I'm all right. I'm just so stupid. You don't need me anymore, do you? I'm just going to my berth. I'm such a useless …" She retreated and disappeared out the door.
Reed initially made to follow her, then detoured to swing back and fix Plormot with a furious look.
"I swear to you, if she has another set back because of your interference and meddling, you'll have me to deal with."
He strode out.
"I sometimes like to see an upset human," Plormot crowed. "They are very amusing. The more worked up they feel, the more flustered they get. Our Lt. Keller – no, our Lt. Reed – has blustered himself into something of a state."
Douqh was not preoccupied with human states of emotion, however. He was caught up in his own admiration for Plormot.
"What a whirlwind, Hilus!" Douqh exclaimed. "Another miraculous guess."
"It is incredible how you think of these things," Dr. Suric added.
"Guess? It wasn't a guess – ah, you may refer to Miss Sato's neurological complications. That, in truth, that was indeed, very much a shot in the dark. I had originally offered it up to her as an easy option to eliminate, in our earlier interview, mainly to warm her up. A way to set her at ease. Yet, she didn't eliminate it."
"But the other points? The identities of Reed and Sato? They were not guesses?"
"No, of course not!" Plormot threw his friends an injured look. "Our dear Countess Kyrth told me of Lee's true identity, herself."
"Told you? When?"
"You remember, I asked her about her tutor? I had already decided in my mind that if Miss Lee were mixed up in the matter, then she must have figured into the household or the Captains' lives professionally."
"Yes, but you pressed the Countess to describe her, and she described a very tall woman."
"Exactly. She had already given her tutor's name as Hoshi Sato, a name with which I was already vaguely familiar. She had seen the other passengers and knew, therefore, that her former tutor was aboard this ship with us, so she proceeded to describe a very different woman. A very tall, very loud and large-busted woman.
"Since the Countess described someone so different, I concluded it was our Miss Lee. This also meant, therefore, that Hannah Lee was an alias."
"But how could you guess Reed?"
"How could I not guess Reed? Once I knew Lee was an alias for Sato, and Keller had proclaimed not to know Jonathan Archer, I knew Keller was also an alias. The two of them knew each other before starting this journey. He called her {darling,} a term of intimacy that someone as uptight as him would never use lightly." Seeing the perplexed looks on the faces of his friends, Plormot broke it down.
"If Sato was so intimately connected to the Archers, and if Sato was traveling as Lee, and Lee was traveling with Keller, and if Lee and Keller knew each other, then Keller was also a fraud. If Keller was a fraud, then it stood to reason he was also connected to both Sato, and Archer."
"You are brilliant!" Douqh cried.
"My," Dr. Suric moaned. "Does everyone on this ship tell nothing but lies?"
"That," Plormot said. "Is what we are about to find out."