Suvuk stood alone on the stone quay at the utmost end of San Francisco bay and waited for his friends, the only friends he had found on Earth. Some days ago he had set a howler out here, asking WhiteEye and his companions to meet him here this evening; and from the howler's sensors he had got the answer they would be there. The manual unit that was part of the howler now announced the calls of the fast approaching group. He quickly typed his own greetings into the unit and then jumped into the miniature hovercraft beside the quay, deactivated the weak tractor beam used for mooring the craft, and went off into the direction the sensors indicated. Ahead, powerful tailfins flopped through the water. He typed another greeting into the manual unit, and the small school of humpbacked whales clustered around his tiny boat. He quickly moored it to the bottom of the sea with the tractor beam, stripped off his coveralls, took a deep breath, and jumped into the sea, mother naked. He even left the manual unit; he didn't need it to communicate with WhiteEye and the others.
WhiteEye joined him at once. Slight and pale, Suvuk swam closely beside the huge, grey whale. With one hand he held on to the strange creature, with the other he touched its face, just behind the eye. The mental contact they were both long accustomed to came at once.
-This is my farewell. I am leaving these oceans to search beyond the surface and beyond the surface of the surface for the strangers that are like you.
- We sang a long time ago with their emissary, and a short time ago, when our forefather and our foremother returned to these oceans through the incomprehensible void. If you find them, tell them we would be gladdened if we were allowed to sing with them again.
The whale surfaced for a moment to allow Suvuk to breathe.
- Your shells carry you far; they carry you through the oceans although you belong to the world beyond the surface; and they carry you through the oceans of the incomprehensible void, beyond the surface of the surface. We do not need any shells; we stay where we are meant to be.
- And yet the strangers that are like you have built themselves shells that allowed them to swim the oceans of the incomprehensible void so they could come here and sing with you. They have come from far away, from further away than our shells can carry us.
- No ocean is to wide for the whales; we come and go as we please in the oceans of this world. After the strangers that are like us found shells that allowed them to swim the oceans of the incomprehensible void, no ocean will have been to wide for them.
Again the whale surfaced.
- If I find them in the oceans of the incomprehensible void I will sing your greetings to them, and I will ask them to return to you.
- That will make us happy; but do not swim too far through those oceans, return to us before the never-ending waters devour you. You are so weak and fragile, you creatures of the surface and the ground beyond the surface; you will die if you swim without shells.
-I know the oceans of the incomprehensible void, and I know the shells that can carry me; do not worry.
Once more, the whale surfaced.
- You are strong among the weak; you come from far away where there are no oceans; and yet you are the only one that dares to swim with us whales in our oceans without shells, and the only one that can speak with us without shells. We admire your courage and your abilities, weak, strong creature of the surface, and we do not want to lose you.
- I am honoured by your friendship; and if I meet the strangers that are like you beyond the incomprehensible void, I will let them know that I am your friend.
-Swim far and strong, Suvuk; may your fins and the fins of your shells carry you where you wish to be.
-Swim far, WhiteEye; may your fins carry you safely through all the oceans until we meet again.
For a last time, the whale surfaced, directly beside the boat. Suvuk let go, gripped the low side of the boat, and pulled himself up. Using the manual unit, he made the howler whistle a last farewell greeting to the school of whales; then he watched the tailfins break through the surface for a last time as they dived to lose themselves again in the wide Terran oceans.
Naked, Suvuk stood in the boat's bow and looked into the direction the whales had vanished to. The wind blew cold around his wet body, through his wet hair, but he hardly felt it. The respect the whales gave him for daring to cross into their world without any equipment more than justified the small inconvenience.
He sat on the boat's side. At first, many years ago, he had swum with WhiteEye using a diving suit and oxygen tank, only his hands bare to enable him to mind-meld with the whales. WhiteEye was still a young whale then, living under the auspices of the New Cetacean Institute in an enclosed area between the Great Barrier Reef and Australia itself.
Then, Suvuk had become fully conscious to his unique possibilities for the first time, and his fascination for anything alien had grown into a calling. The misconceptions prevailing between Humans and whales were so absurd they almost could make a Vulcan laugh; and only a Vulcan was able to understand both sides.
Both sides were convinced that the other was so weak it urgently need help. Although basic communication had been possible for quite some while, Suvuk had been the first to discuss the whales' thoughts, philosophy, their view of the world, with them.
Basically, the crux of all those misconceptions was the thing about the shells; that is, the almost unbridgeable discrepancies between material and non-material culture. It was obvious to the whales that the weak, small humans who would die in the oceans without their shells needed protection; the ethics of the powerful, wise creatures would not allow them to use their strength against such weak beings. The small whales, such as dolphins, had often sought contact with individual humans, carried the survivors of shipwrecks to the shore and sometimes organised meetings at the edge of their worlds to try and communicate with the creatures of the surface; the great whales, well knowing the fear they instilled into the tiny beings, had watched the humans and their doings on a more general level, although there had also been desperate acts of mass suicide to alert the humans to the damage they did to the oceans with their shells. And yet all whales had in the end rather died than departing in the slightest from their ethical principles. Such a commitment must win undivided respect from a Vulcan.
To humans, on the other hand, their shells constituted a multitude of differentiated implements; and because of their possessions and their destructive powers they thought themselves so limitlessly superior to the whales that they believed they needed to care for them as for a garden in the desert after almost having annihilated them. How hard it was for humans to realise that creation wasn't just the opposite of destruction; how hard they had to work in order to understand that life was irretrievably unique.
When Suvuk had jumped into the water with the whales for the first time, he had found the final justification for his survival despite all tradition.
Illogical to ponder the past and get cold. From that encounter a commitment for the future had developed, and to fulfil that he would soon have to leave.
Suvuk dried with a rough towel and dressed once more in his coveralls. He disengaged the tractor beam and returned to the quay to retrieve the howler; then he went back to Starfleet Academy by water.
The culture of the whales as he knew it would not by any logical conclusion justify the possession of "shells that swam in space"; even the discovery of the abandoned homeworld of the spacegoing whales, destroyed by a somewhat Borg-like species, had not satisfactorily explained those inventions, which remained a fascinating mystery. One of his students had claimed in a paper that the whales might have adapted the space travel technology of some other species, as their way of thinking would not allow for independent invention; but Suvuk was not sure about that, although he had judged the work of that student quite favourably. He had been a Polynesian, a gentle, cheerful man from Tahiti - but he would not think about that now.
No; the whales understood the principle of a shell from observing the lesser inhabitants of their oceans, and furthermore their imagination worked by nature in three-dimensional space. Once the first whale had made the first step in using tools, if not with the body, then by telepathy, their mental powers had carried them not onto dry land, but straight into the air, which was no more than too-thin water to them; and from there it was a short way into space, and then into hyperspace; and sometime during that development the whales obviously had found the principles of zero acceleration transportation. Nothing else could explain why the historical whale probe that had forced short-sighted humanity a little less than a century ago to save the humpbacked whales had apparently materialised from thin nothingness.
And that was the reason why the Federation was willing to pay for Suvuk's endlessly expensive research. For quite some time, there had been experiments with zero acceleration transportation, most notably by the Hamalki. This cross-roads of philosophy and mechanics seemed to constitute the next inevitable step in the development of thinking life; there must exist the possibility of a contraption which would convince the universe in logical terms for a short time that it didn't exist, so that a spaceship would be able to reappear at any given point when the universe finally claimed it existed after all; but all tries by all known civilisation so far had either fallen completely flat, or had entailed unbearable side effects.
And yet there were recurrent indications that the possibility of zero acceleration transportation did indeed exist. For example, the inhabitants of the Q continuum obviously possessed such powers; but if ever one of them would descend into the dimensional limitations the humans lived in, it invariably turned out to be an irresponsible person that merely wanted to play, and that unnerved everybody present.
Suvuk was probably the only citizen of the whole Federation who would have positively welcomed a chance to meet the particular Q that had driven Starfleet to temper tantrums during the last few years; he was astonished about the apparent lack of patience in those humans that saw themselves completely unable to adequately establish communications with such a unique being. They gave vent to their emotions, suffered terrifying fits of rage, and were only happy after the alien creature had gone on its way. Unfortunately no sensible Q wanted anything to do with humanoids; that one, described as "mad, bad and dangerous to know", was obviously unable to establish any sensible co-operation.
The most recent reports of his appearance placed him at exactly where Suvuk had himself got transferred to; and as he had before now always returned to the same humans to bother them some more, Suvuk thought it quite possible that he would meet the creature there.
But in connection with zero acceleration transportation, the whales offered by far the better perspective. According to all known evidence, they operated on the basis of a similar dimensional perception as the established spacefaring civilisations; their ideas were in any case considerably easier to comprehend then arcane operations in mindwrangling continua.
And although the zero acceleration drive was part of the justification for the Federation to foot the bill for Suvuk's modest lifestyle and his cost intensive research, to him it remained somewhat of a pretext. No, he simply wanted to go further and further out, to where no-one had gone before, and understand those no-one had spoken to before.
At this moment, Suvuk reached the deep subterranean boathouse belonging to the Academy. He left his boat with the harbour personnel and hurried to the turbolift, tucking the howler under his arm. Precisely oh point two hours remained until he was to begin his class.
He put the howler onto a chest of drawers in his quarters to put it away later on, took off the coveralls and turned on the shower when the intercom chimed. Dripping wet, he answered it. "No visual connection, please".
It was one of the female students from his course for non-exologists. "Lieutenant Suvuk, I merely wanted to ask whether class today takes place as scheduled".
"Of course. If I were otherwise engaged I would have hung up a notice".
"We only thought now the exams are over..."
"I do not teach you with a view to the examinations, but to what may be in store for you in your active service, which everything but over".
"This is an old commonplace from Earth", another voice now came in. "Non scholam sed vitam discimus, that means...."
"Thank you; I learned Latin already during my youth on Vulcan; it is still a basic language for the understanding of all human culture. I am informed. If you plan not to appear to my class for some reason, you should be able to make that decision without procuring my permission first".
A third voice chimed in. Apparently, the students were clustering around the vidphone in a whole drove.
"We didn't want to not appear completely, it's only that all the other instructors normally meet for the last session in a more informal setting".
"The other instructors are mostly human. You can drink your coffee when my class is over".
Suvuk had dried off and dressed by now, and added unidirectional visual while grooming himself to his usual flawlessness.
The students were assembled in a group around a public terminal in the main lobby. In the background a representative cross-section of the diversity within the Federation was hurrying to and fro.
One of the female students stopped a passer-by. "JP, you explain to Lieutenant Suvuk why we want to drink coffee with him; you're usually quite good at discussions with him".
"Are you crazy", Äänekoski's voice came from the background. "I have a class to attend. If you care to come with me I can explain to you on the way why it is inappropriate to want to drink coffee with a Vulcan; I am already late as it is".
"As always", Suvuk cut in over the vidphone. "But there is no hurry, Lieutenant. Owing to this little negotiation I have been held up myself, which will make me arrive roughly oh point oh five hours late at the classroom".
Äänekoski was a bit spooked, approached the terminal, saw nothing, and turned away again. Suvuk, ready to go, switched over to bi-directional visual. "Lieutenant?"
"Lieutenant, I am sorry. Apparently, my colleagues have misinterpreted the situation. We do not in any way want to importune on you".
"Fawning creep", another student hissed from the side. "You don't usually crawl for him like that".
"Only when dealing with factual matters. You seem not to have understood anything".
"Don't be so damn snobbish, JP; only yesterday you...."
"I'm not snobbish, only realistic. Even you wouldn't....."
"Olkaa hiljaa, luutnantti", Suvuk cut in again. "He eivät voi ymmärtää; he ovat vai tavallisia ihmisiä. Mutta paljon kiitoksia avustanne, vaikka minä en tarvitse sitä".
"Anteeksi, mä oon vaan vihanen että ne hermostuttivat teidät niin kauheesti. Tä'ä on niin sopimatonta".
"Niin. Teidät vihannekin on samalaiseksi sopimaton ja epälooginen. Mutta en halua kiistella kanssanne puhelimessa. Kuin ehdottomasti tarvitsette kahvia, voitte saada sitä replikaatorista. Näkemiin".
Suvuk switched off his terminal and went on his way.
Translation!
- Calm down, Lieutenant; they can't understand. They are just ordinary humans. However, thank you for your help, although I don't need it.
- Sorry, I'm just mad 'cause they bugged you so terribly. That's so inappropriate.
- Indeed. Your anger is inappropriate and illogical as well. But I don't want to argue with you on the telephone. I expect you at the classroom in five minutes' time. If you absolutely need coffee, you can get it from the replicator. Goodbye.
Äänekoski felt profoundly ashamed. He hadn't wanted any coffee in the first place, and now it seemed as if Suvuk had made the concession to do him a favour. Despite the fact that he thought the whole idea rather whacky from the start; these moronic creatures had sat in Suvuk's classes every week for almost three years and still tried to anthropomorphise the Vulcan. And the worst thing was the way they had tried to submit him to the group pressure just now to make him appear as one of them in front of Suvuk.
"Why did you do that", the female student who had stopped him in the beginning now tried to needle him. She was a blond Californian and belonged to the HQ staff; sometimes Äänekoski suspected she had joined Starfleet only because she lived close by. "Why do you have to suck up to him now he can't give you a better grade any more? Before the exams you quarrelled with him all the time. If you try to be oh-so-Vulcan you should realise that it's illogical".
"Do you know what integrity means, Carol?" he answered. "Obviously not".
"Now get off it, JP", another student interrupted now. "Why did you have to squawk in that weird gibberish? That wasn't Vulcan".
"It was Finnish", Äänekoski answered curtly, turning to go.
"Before I forget: Suvuk said if you absolutely need to have coffee, you can bring some from the replicator".
"What you, of course, will not do", Carol mocked.
"Exactly", he answered, sprinting off.
Those embarrassing creatures. How in the universe did they ever get to join Starfleet? Of course Starfleet set other standards for its personnel than he set for himself. Certainly they all did their jobs with unparalleled efficiency; but anything alien was to them only a disturbance one needed to take a course against.
He knew that he sometimes appeared as arrogant as any Vulcan, and with less justification; but everything alien, especially alien machines, filled him with endless fascination, so he approached it with suitable respect.
His parents owned a small gadget to co-ordinate the household with; it was a miniature computer, a sort of cross between a notice pad and a tricorder. Those things were manufactured on Vulcan and rarely seen on Earth. It had been a wedding present from a relative who had bee in the merchant navy for a few years. When JP was twelve, the cat had thrown the device off the kitchen table. After that, it worked unreliably at best, thus causing exactly the sort of domestic disputes on banalities it was meant to prevent. Jukka-Pekka's father had taken it apart and then sat for awhile in front of his workbench, staring at the alien electronics components without a clue. Finally, he dumped them into the wastebasket, from where JP had fished them out again. In his room, he brooded over the broken pieces for an eternity, poking and experimenting, until he found out what was what, and how it worked. Finally, he discovered the original damage, rebuilt that component, and assembled everything once more. At Christmas, when he last had visited his parents, the Vulcan household computer was still working flawlessly.-
By now, Jukka-Pekka knew the reason he was able to do that had not been any special ingenuity, but simply the fact that he approached the device without any preconceptions, while his father, used as he was to the principles of Terran electronics, had found himself unable to make head or tail of the alien components. Lieutenant Äänekoski knew full well that his work depended on his acceptance of the strange at least as much as on his technical knowledge. To sit in the furthest corner of the explored galaxy brooding over alien machines until he found out how they worked and then got them to work again seemed to him an extremely desirable job.
His secret dream was that one day some alien would come by with a broken ZA drive, which he then could repair and understand. The invention of the zero acceleration drive was an old dream of all Federation technicians. Äänekoski saw no realistic chance for himself to invent that miraculous machine - he would be content if he ever got to repair and then copy such a drive.
By now, he was jogging down the hallway on which the classroom was located. Of his comrades, none appeared to have turned up, but the door was open. With his usual respect towards Suvuk he took his post beside the door to wait for the others. No reason to force himself onto Suvuk even more than he had already been forced to do.
But Suvuk with his sensitive Vulcan hearing had obviously noticed him already. He appeared in the doorway and said ironically, "As you can doubtlessly perceive, the classroom is already open. No logical reason is keeping from entering".
Äänekoski followed the Vulcan into the room and sat down on his usual seat in the second row. He put his recording device down and switched it on, tying to elicit as little attention as possible. For the first time ever, he was alone with the much-admired Vulcan, and he was worried that this fact threatened to fill him with joy. He would not now, at the last chance ever, fall in love with Suvuk after all.
The Vulcan, however, approached Äänekoski's seat on his own accord and stood before him, arms folded behind his back.
"I see you didn't bring any coffee, Lieutenant".
He had to rub it in. "I wish to disassociate myself from my comrades' behaviour", he declared as neutrally as possible; still, he couldn't keep a note of embarrassment from creeping into his voice.
Suvuk lowered the corners of his mouth somewhat disdainfully; an expression that, for Vulcans, seemed to replace a smile in some situations. "The human emotion of embarrassment, although quite natural for you, is nevertheless inappropriate to this situation. I fully realise that you were not in any way involved in that trite argument".
"I'm still sorry to have been pulled in", Äänekoski rejoined stubbornly.
"You inordinately insist on your negative emotions; a behaviour I often observed in humans. However, I cannot but ask myself why you take such a banality that seriously.
By now, Jukka-Pekka was sorry to have apologised. A counter-attack seemed the only way out. "I know, on Vulcan you have small computers that deal with banalities for you, but we humans seem to be incurably attracted to them".
Luckily Suvuk chose an answer that took them away from the tiresome issue at last. "How did you hear about Vulcan logistics boards? That matter is hardly of any concern for a Starfleet technician".
"We used to have one at home", Äänekoski replied, to his own surprise. "When I was twelve I repaired it after my father had given up on it. That was the beginning of my career as exotechnician".
"Fascinating", Suvuk rejoined, lifting an eyebrow. He was silent for a moment, and then continued, "That explains much. You know, I do not think too much of genetic predestination. A child becomes Vulcan, Human, Klingon or whatever mostly by cultural influence. Sehlats and logistics boards make a Vulcan just as green blood and pointed ears do".
Äänekoski was somewhat astonished at the sudden open-ness from his instructor, who had never before uttered a personal opinion; enthusiastically he embarked on the debate which might well be their last.
"You mean, if a human child grows up surrounded with Sehlats and logistics boards by the Vulcan culture, it would later behave like a Vulcan?"
"Indeed. Of course it would never really belong, and as a human it would emotionally feel that separation, so that I would deem such an experiment inadvisable, but its main behavioural patterns would beyond any doubt be Vulcan".
"Odd. That child would be missing all the abilities Vulcans are born with".
"Perhaps it would experience some difficulties when trying to learn the mind meld or the nerve pinch; the logic, however, and the suppression of all emotions I believe to be a product of cultural influences".
Äänekoski pondered that for a while. "Sounds rather credible. I'm only astonished that you, as a Vulcan, hold forth such an opinion. In my experience, most Vulcans are rather - how should I say - convinced of their fundamental difference".
"Conceited about it, you mean, Lieutenant. You must take into consideration that I am a renegade Vulcan. Albeit my estrangement from my home planet was caused by other reasons, it has allowed me to view the culture I stem from with some distance, from the outside".
As if he felt he had gone too far, he turned to the clock above the display screen. "Your comrades are obviously not going to appear today. So you could really go as well and get yourself that coffee after all".
Startled by the sudden dismissal from the fascinating Vulcan's company, Äänekoski could hardly control his emotions. All he could to was veer his reaction to the very surface of what went on inside him. "Stop going on about your coffee", he groaned. "Although I am from Finland, I prefer tea!"
Suvuk regarded him with raised eyebrows and pulled-down corners of his mouth, an expression of the utmost amusement with him. The, he turned away without a word and returned to the display. Äänekoski gave up, suppressed another apology, and switched off his recording device. To his unending astonishment, Suvuk approached the small replicator other instructors used to get materials for experiments, and ordered, in a neutral voice, two mugs of black tea.
"If that is the case, you shall have your tea". He returned to Äänekoski, handed him one of the mugs, and, with the other, sat down on the chair before Jukka-Pekka in the first row, turning it around. "What I would be interested in hearing from you was how you argued the need for specialised exotechnicians with Starfleet command. On which theoretical foundations did you build your discipline?"
For a moment, Äänekoski couldn't speak with joy about the friendliness Suvuk so unexpectedly showed him. Then he realised that it had happened after all: deep inside he felt the unmistakable signs for exactly the inappropriate reaction he had hoped to avoid in connection with Suvuk. The Vulcan regarded him seriously and sipped from his tea. Of course, he still expected an answer.
"Well", Äänekoski managed to utter, "I did not plan on inventing a discipline. I only knew I wanted to specialise in alien technology and to be able to repair machines incomprehensible to others. I had the first inklings about that since my youth. But when I returned to the Academy three years ago, I realised that my discipline didn't exist. So I assembled a curriculum for myself from the existing courses, and was rather astonished when people started calling me an exotechnician, and thought I was doing something highly original. I thought there were more of my kind".
Suvuk pondered this, shaking his head. "Why? Starfleet needs people who can repair their own machines. Only after the Borg attack people began realising how important the understanding of alien technology is; the Federation was so especially helpless against them because they had nobody able to fathom the Borg technology. But even at this point I wouldn't have had the idea of educating technical personnel to become exotechnicians. You did show original thinking indeed".
"But I never planned to; I don't consider myself to be original".
"The human way of playing down one's strong points in an unrealistic way called modesty always seemed to me rather counterproductive. We are here to serve; but if we do not admit to what we are able to do, it will impede our service, Lieutenant".
"Interesting point of view, Lieutenant. If you think so, perhaps you can convince Starfleet next year to educate more technical staff to become exotechnicians. Especially as it should be obvious how convenient it would be for the outposts if they had personnel specialised on repairing alien machines":
"I already talked to the Academy leadership, and your ideas are now moving slowly through the mills of Terran bureaucracy. However, I will be unable to monitor the progress, as I shall not remain here. I intend to pursue my own research project".
"Which would be?" Äänekoski had dropped all caution; he was speaking in honest curiosity.
"The search for the traces of that spacefaring civilisation of cetaceans, of which you probably heard rumours".
"Of course I did. I would really love to get to dissemble a probe from that civilisation. It is amazing what those whales did with their communication and telepathy waves".
Suvuk was silent with astonishment. "You know", he said reflectively, "you just said something very valuable indeed. In their communications to us, the whales are so fixated on our use of shells that I never fully realised what the equivalent would be in their culture. I thought it was based on communication; but on a physical level, it isn't matter as with our culture, but waves. Shells are merely receptacles for waves; so what whales do with shells is not important. We are so fixated on matter that we never even asked the right questions. Sometimes it seemed illogical to me to teach this basic course, when I could have done research or taught specialised students during the time. Just now, you proved to me that my decision was right".
"We are here to serve, I for you just as you for me", Äänekoski said plainly. They looked at each other over their teacups, and for a moment a strange intimacy grew between them, as if they simply belonged together to tackle the universe from a common point of view.
All of a sudden, Suvuk got up and returned the mugs to the replicator, where they dissolved. "I shall wait no longer", he said in his usual cold and no-nonsense way.
He waited in front of the door until Äänekoski had left the classroom to then lock it by means of an encoded card. "Live long and prosper", he said curtly, turning around the corner.
Äänekoski looked after him, completely flabbergasted. This unexpected friendliness and the subsequent harsh rejection had been too much for his stirred-up human emotions. How close they had suddenly been, and how impersonal Suvuk's farewells had then been by contrast! It had first seemed to him that they were developing a common basis for a friendship, and now he stood here, left alone, and was never going to see the wonderful, astonishing alien again.
He felt like crying, and wandered off to his quarters in order to do exactly that over a few beers and some lapinpystit.
Suvuk stood alone in the turbolift and harshly criticised himself. The tea had definitely been the wrong move, but even the remark about the moulding influences of culture was too much. He should not even have encouraged the human to talk about the logistics board. As if he had never been educated to control himself, Suvuk had dropped one barrier after the other and had at the end looked the human in the eye, completely relaxed, and talked to him as an equal; and worse, as if they belonged together, as if there could be a connection. Suddenly he had begun doubting his in-Vulcan loneliness, suddenly it had not seemed necessary to keep up the reserve with which a Vulcan approached any stranger against Äänekoski. He had rarely committed such a capital mistake. He would need hours of meditation to regain his self-control.
Perhaps it was only that he was to expect the next bout of pon farr within the next year; perhaps his Vulcan instinct had started asserting he needed a bond-mate; but actually letting go of his usual coldness and severity towards an attractive human male, that was absurd. As if there was any escape from the monstrosity of his mere existence!
WhiteEye joined him at once. Slight and pale, Suvuk swam closely beside the huge, grey whale. With one hand he held on to the strange creature, with the other he touched its face, just behind the eye. The mental contact they were both long accustomed to came at once.
-This is my farewell. I am leaving these oceans to search beyond the surface and beyond the surface of the surface for the strangers that are like you.
- We sang a long time ago with their emissary, and a short time ago, when our forefather and our foremother returned to these oceans through the incomprehensible void. If you find them, tell them we would be gladdened if we were allowed to sing with them again.
The whale surfaced for a moment to allow Suvuk to breathe.
- Your shells carry you far; they carry you through the oceans although you belong to the world beyond the surface; and they carry you through the oceans of the incomprehensible void, beyond the surface of the surface. We do not need any shells; we stay where we are meant to be.
- And yet the strangers that are like you have built themselves shells that allowed them to swim the oceans of the incomprehensible void so they could come here and sing with you. They have come from far away, from further away than our shells can carry us.
- No ocean is to wide for the whales; we come and go as we please in the oceans of this world. After the strangers that are like us found shells that allowed them to swim the oceans of the incomprehensible void, no ocean will have been to wide for them.
Again the whale surfaced.
- If I find them in the oceans of the incomprehensible void I will sing your greetings to them, and I will ask them to return to you.
- That will make us happy; but do not swim too far through those oceans, return to us before the never-ending waters devour you. You are so weak and fragile, you creatures of the surface and the ground beyond the surface; you will die if you swim without shells.
-I know the oceans of the incomprehensible void, and I know the shells that can carry me; do not worry.
Once more, the whale surfaced.
- You are strong among the weak; you come from far away where there are no oceans; and yet you are the only one that dares to swim with us whales in our oceans without shells, and the only one that can speak with us without shells. We admire your courage and your abilities, weak, strong creature of the surface, and we do not want to lose you.
- I am honoured by your friendship; and if I meet the strangers that are like you beyond the incomprehensible void, I will let them know that I am your friend.
-Swim far and strong, Suvuk; may your fins and the fins of your shells carry you where you wish to be.
-Swim far, WhiteEye; may your fins carry you safely through all the oceans until we meet again.
For a last time, the whale surfaced, directly beside the boat. Suvuk let go, gripped the low side of the boat, and pulled himself up. Using the manual unit, he made the howler whistle a last farewell greeting to the school of whales; then he watched the tailfins break through the surface for a last time as they dived to lose themselves again in the wide Terran oceans.
Naked, Suvuk stood in the boat's bow and looked into the direction the whales had vanished to. The wind blew cold around his wet body, through his wet hair, but he hardly felt it. The respect the whales gave him for daring to cross into their world without any equipment more than justified the small inconvenience.
He sat on the boat's side. At first, many years ago, he had swum with WhiteEye using a diving suit and oxygen tank, only his hands bare to enable him to mind-meld with the whales. WhiteEye was still a young whale then, living under the auspices of the New Cetacean Institute in an enclosed area between the Great Barrier Reef and Australia itself.
Then, Suvuk had become fully conscious to his unique possibilities for the first time, and his fascination for anything alien had grown into a calling. The misconceptions prevailing between Humans and whales were so absurd they almost could make a Vulcan laugh; and only a Vulcan was able to understand both sides.
Both sides were convinced that the other was so weak it urgently need help. Although basic communication had been possible for quite some while, Suvuk had been the first to discuss the whales' thoughts, philosophy, their view of the world, with them.
Basically, the crux of all those misconceptions was the thing about the shells; that is, the almost unbridgeable discrepancies between material and non-material culture. It was obvious to the whales that the weak, small humans who would die in the oceans without their shells needed protection; the ethics of the powerful, wise creatures would not allow them to use their strength against such weak beings. The small whales, such as dolphins, had often sought contact with individual humans, carried the survivors of shipwrecks to the shore and sometimes organised meetings at the edge of their worlds to try and communicate with the creatures of the surface; the great whales, well knowing the fear they instilled into the tiny beings, had watched the humans and their doings on a more general level, although there had also been desperate acts of mass suicide to alert the humans to the damage they did to the oceans with their shells. And yet all whales had in the end rather died than departing in the slightest from their ethical principles. Such a commitment must win undivided respect from a Vulcan.
To humans, on the other hand, their shells constituted a multitude of differentiated implements; and because of their possessions and their destructive powers they thought themselves so limitlessly superior to the whales that they believed they needed to care for them as for a garden in the desert after almost having annihilated them. How hard it was for humans to realise that creation wasn't just the opposite of destruction; how hard they had to work in order to understand that life was irretrievably unique.
When Suvuk had jumped into the water with the whales for the first time, he had found the final justification for his survival despite all tradition.
Illogical to ponder the past and get cold. From that encounter a commitment for the future had developed, and to fulfil that he would soon have to leave.
Suvuk dried with a rough towel and dressed once more in his coveralls. He disengaged the tractor beam and returned to the quay to retrieve the howler; then he went back to Starfleet Academy by water.
The culture of the whales as he knew it would not by any logical conclusion justify the possession of "shells that swam in space"; even the discovery of the abandoned homeworld of the spacegoing whales, destroyed by a somewhat Borg-like species, had not satisfactorily explained those inventions, which remained a fascinating mystery. One of his students had claimed in a paper that the whales might have adapted the space travel technology of some other species, as their way of thinking would not allow for independent invention; but Suvuk was not sure about that, although he had judged the work of that student quite favourably. He had been a Polynesian, a gentle, cheerful man from Tahiti - but he would not think about that now.
No; the whales understood the principle of a shell from observing the lesser inhabitants of their oceans, and furthermore their imagination worked by nature in three-dimensional space. Once the first whale had made the first step in using tools, if not with the body, then by telepathy, their mental powers had carried them not onto dry land, but straight into the air, which was no more than too-thin water to them; and from there it was a short way into space, and then into hyperspace; and sometime during that development the whales obviously had found the principles of zero acceleration transportation. Nothing else could explain why the historical whale probe that had forced short-sighted humanity a little less than a century ago to save the humpbacked whales had apparently materialised from thin nothingness.
And that was the reason why the Federation was willing to pay for Suvuk's endlessly expensive research. For quite some time, there had been experiments with zero acceleration transportation, most notably by the Hamalki. This cross-roads of philosophy and mechanics seemed to constitute the next inevitable step in the development of thinking life; there must exist the possibility of a contraption which would convince the universe in logical terms for a short time that it didn't exist, so that a spaceship would be able to reappear at any given point when the universe finally claimed it existed after all; but all tries by all known civilisation so far had either fallen completely flat, or had entailed unbearable side effects.
And yet there were recurrent indications that the possibility of zero acceleration transportation did indeed exist. For example, the inhabitants of the Q continuum obviously possessed such powers; but if ever one of them would descend into the dimensional limitations the humans lived in, it invariably turned out to be an irresponsible person that merely wanted to play, and that unnerved everybody present.
Suvuk was probably the only citizen of the whole Federation who would have positively welcomed a chance to meet the particular Q that had driven Starfleet to temper tantrums during the last few years; he was astonished about the apparent lack of patience in those humans that saw themselves completely unable to adequately establish communications with such a unique being. They gave vent to their emotions, suffered terrifying fits of rage, and were only happy after the alien creature had gone on its way. Unfortunately no sensible Q wanted anything to do with humanoids; that one, described as "mad, bad and dangerous to know", was obviously unable to establish any sensible co-operation.
The most recent reports of his appearance placed him at exactly where Suvuk had himself got transferred to; and as he had before now always returned to the same humans to bother them some more, Suvuk thought it quite possible that he would meet the creature there.
But in connection with zero acceleration transportation, the whales offered by far the better perspective. According to all known evidence, they operated on the basis of a similar dimensional perception as the established spacefaring civilisations; their ideas were in any case considerably easier to comprehend then arcane operations in mindwrangling continua.
And although the zero acceleration drive was part of the justification for the Federation to foot the bill for Suvuk's modest lifestyle and his cost intensive research, to him it remained somewhat of a pretext. No, he simply wanted to go further and further out, to where no-one had gone before, and understand those no-one had spoken to before.
At this moment, Suvuk reached the deep subterranean boathouse belonging to the Academy. He left his boat with the harbour personnel and hurried to the turbolift, tucking the howler under his arm. Precisely oh point two hours remained until he was to begin his class.
He put the howler onto a chest of drawers in his quarters to put it away later on, took off the coveralls and turned on the shower when the intercom chimed. Dripping wet, he answered it. "No visual connection, please".
It was one of the female students from his course for non-exologists. "Lieutenant Suvuk, I merely wanted to ask whether class today takes place as scheduled".
"Of course. If I were otherwise engaged I would have hung up a notice".
"We only thought now the exams are over..."
"I do not teach you with a view to the examinations, but to what may be in store for you in your active service, which everything but over".
"This is an old commonplace from Earth", another voice now came in. "Non scholam sed vitam discimus, that means...."
"Thank you; I learned Latin already during my youth on Vulcan; it is still a basic language for the understanding of all human culture. I am informed. If you plan not to appear to my class for some reason, you should be able to make that decision without procuring my permission first".
A third voice chimed in. Apparently, the students were clustering around the vidphone in a whole drove.
"We didn't want to not appear completely, it's only that all the other instructors normally meet for the last session in a more informal setting".
"The other instructors are mostly human. You can drink your coffee when my class is over".
Suvuk had dried off and dressed by now, and added unidirectional visual while grooming himself to his usual flawlessness.
The students were assembled in a group around a public terminal in the main lobby. In the background a representative cross-section of the diversity within the Federation was hurrying to and fro.
One of the female students stopped a passer-by. "JP, you explain to Lieutenant Suvuk why we want to drink coffee with him; you're usually quite good at discussions with him".
"Are you crazy", Äänekoski's voice came from the background. "I have a class to attend. If you care to come with me I can explain to you on the way why it is inappropriate to want to drink coffee with a Vulcan; I am already late as it is".
"As always", Suvuk cut in over the vidphone. "But there is no hurry, Lieutenant. Owing to this little negotiation I have been held up myself, which will make me arrive roughly oh point oh five hours late at the classroom".
Äänekoski was a bit spooked, approached the terminal, saw nothing, and turned away again. Suvuk, ready to go, switched over to bi-directional visual. "Lieutenant?"
"Lieutenant, I am sorry. Apparently, my colleagues have misinterpreted the situation. We do not in any way want to importune on you".
"Fawning creep", another student hissed from the side. "You don't usually crawl for him like that".
"Only when dealing with factual matters. You seem not to have understood anything".
"Don't be so damn snobbish, JP; only yesterday you...."
"I'm not snobbish, only realistic. Even you wouldn't....."
"Olkaa hiljaa, luutnantti", Suvuk cut in again. "He eivät voi ymmärtää; he ovat vai tavallisia ihmisiä. Mutta paljon kiitoksia avustanne, vaikka minä en tarvitse sitä".
"Anteeksi, mä oon vaan vihanen että ne hermostuttivat teidät niin kauheesti. Tä'ä on niin sopimatonta".
"Niin. Teidät vihannekin on samalaiseksi sopimaton ja epälooginen. Mutta en halua kiistella kanssanne puhelimessa. Kuin ehdottomasti tarvitsette kahvia, voitte saada sitä replikaatorista. Näkemiin".
Suvuk switched off his terminal and went on his way.
Translation!
- Calm down, Lieutenant; they can't understand. They are just ordinary humans. However, thank you for your help, although I don't need it.
- Sorry, I'm just mad 'cause they bugged you so terribly. That's so inappropriate.
- Indeed. Your anger is inappropriate and illogical as well. But I don't want to argue with you on the telephone. I expect you at the classroom in five minutes' time. If you absolutely need coffee, you can get it from the replicator. Goodbye.
Äänekoski felt profoundly ashamed. He hadn't wanted any coffee in the first place, and now it seemed as if Suvuk had made the concession to do him a favour. Despite the fact that he thought the whole idea rather whacky from the start; these moronic creatures had sat in Suvuk's classes every week for almost three years and still tried to anthropomorphise the Vulcan. And the worst thing was the way they had tried to submit him to the group pressure just now to make him appear as one of them in front of Suvuk.
"Why did you do that", the female student who had stopped him in the beginning now tried to needle him. She was a blond Californian and belonged to the HQ staff; sometimes Äänekoski suspected she had joined Starfleet only because she lived close by. "Why do you have to suck up to him now he can't give you a better grade any more? Before the exams you quarrelled with him all the time. If you try to be oh-so-Vulcan you should realise that it's illogical".
"Do you know what integrity means, Carol?" he answered. "Obviously not".
"Now get off it, JP", another student interrupted now. "Why did you have to squawk in that weird gibberish? That wasn't Vulcan".
"It was Finnish", Äänekoski answered curtly, turning to go.
"Before I forget: Suvuk said if you absolutely need to have coffee, you can bring some from the replicator".
"What you, of course, will not do", Carol mocked.
"Exactly", he answered, sprinting off.
Those embarrassing creatures. How in the universe did they ever get to join Starfleet? Of course Starfleet set other standards for its personnel than he set for himself. Certainly they all did their jobs with unparalleled efficiency; but anything alien was to them only a disturbance one needed to take a course against.
He knew that he sometimes appeared as arrogant as any Vulcan, and with less justification; but everything alien, especially alien machines, filled him with endless fascination, so he approached it with suitable respect.
His parents owned a small gadget to co-ordinate the household with; it was a miniature computer, a sort of cross between a notice pad and a tricorder. Those things were manufactured on Vulcan and rarely seen on Earth. It had been a wedding present from a relative who had bee in the merchant navy for a few years. When JP was twelve, the cat had thrown the device off the kitchen table. After that, it worked unreliably at best, thus causing exactly the sort of domestic disputes on banalities it was meant to prevent. Jukka-Pekka's father had taken it apart and then sat for awhile in front of his workbench, staring at the alien electronics components without a clue. Finally, he dumped them into the wastebasket, from where JP had fished them out again. In his room, he brooded over the broken pieces for an eternity, poking and experimenting, until he found out what was what, and how it worked. Finally, he discovered the original damage, rebuilt that component, and assembled everything once more. At Christmas, when he last had visited his parents, the Vulcan household computer was still working flawlessly.-
By now, Jukka-Pekka knew the reason he was able to do that had not been any special ingenuity, but simply the fact that he approached the device without any preconceptions, while his father, used as he was to the principles of Terran electronics, had found himself unable to make head or tail of the alien components. Lieutenant Äänekoski knew full well that his work depended on his acceptance of the strange at least as much as on his technical knowledge. To sit in the furthest corner of the explored galaxy brooding over alien machines until he found out how they worked and then got them to work again seemed to him an extremely desirable job.
His secret dream was that one day some alien would come by with a broken ZA drive, which he then could repair and understand. The invention of the zero acceleration drive was an old dream of all Federation technicians. Äänekoski saw no realistic chance for himself to invent that miraculous machine - he would be content if he ever got to repair and then copy such a drive.
By now, he was jogging down the hallway on which the classroom was located. Of his comrades, none appeared to have turned up, but the door was open. With his usual respect towards Suvuk he took his post beside the door to wait for the others. No reason to force himself onto Suvuk even more than he had already been forced to do.
But Suvuk with his sensitive Vulcan hearing had obviously noticed him already. He appeared in the doorway and said ironically, "As you can doubtlessly perceive, the classroom is already open. No logical reason is keeping from entering".
Äänekoski followed the Vulcan into the room and sat down on his usual seat in the second row. He put his recording device down and switched it on, tying to elicit as little attention as possible. For the first time ever, he was alone with the much-admired Vulcan, and he was worried that this fact threatened to fill him with joy. He would not now, at the last chance ever, fall in love with Suvuk after all.
The Vulcan, however, approached Äänekoski's seat on his own accord and stood before him, arms folded behind his back.
"I see you didn't bring any coffee, Lieutenant".
He had to rub it in. "I wish to disassociate myself from my comrades' behaviour", he declared as neutrally as possible; still, he couldn't keep a note of embarrassment from creeping into his voice.
Suvuk lowered the corners of his mouth somewhat disdainfully; an expression that, for Vulcans, seemed to replace a smile in some situations. "The human emotion of embarrassment, although quite natural for you, is nevertheless inappropriate to this situation. I fully realise that you were not in any way involved in that trite argument".
"I'm still sorry to have been pulled in", Äänekoski rejoined stubbornly.
"You inordinately insist on your negative emotions; a behaviour I often observed in humans. However, I cannot but ask myself why you take such a banality that seriously.
By now, Jukka-Pekka was sorry to have apologised. A counter-attack seemed the only way out. "I know, on Vulcan you have small computers that deal with banalities for you, but we humans seem to be incurably attracted to them".
Luckily Suvuk chose an answer that took them away from the tiresome issue at last. "How did you hear about Vulcan logistics boards? That matter is hardly of any concern for a Starfleet technician".
"We used to have one at home", Äänekoski replied, to his own surprise. "When I was twelve I repaired it after my father had given up on it. That was the beginning of my career as exotechnician".
"Fascinating", Suvuk rejoined, lifting an eyebrow. He was silent for a moment, and then continued, "That explains much. You know, I do not think too much of genetic predestination. A child becomes Vulcan, Human, Klingon or whatever mostly by cultural influence. Sehlats and logistics boards make a Vulcan just as green blood and pointed ears do".
Äänekoski was somewhat astonished at the sudden open-ness from his instructor, who had never before uttered a personal opinion; enthusiastically he embarked on the debate which might well be their last.
"You mean, if a human child grows up surrounded with Sehlats and logistics boards by the Vulcan culture, it would later behave like a Vulcan?"
"Indeed. Of course it would never really belong, and as a human it would emotionally feel that separation, so that I would deem such an experiment inadvisable, but its main behavioural patterns would beyond any doubt be Vulcan".
"Odd. That child would be missing all the abilities Vulcans are born with".
"Perhaps it would experience some difficulties when trying to learn the mind meld or the nerve pinch; the logic, however, and the suppression of all emotions I believe to be a product of cultural influences".
Äänekoski pondered that for a while. "Sounds rather credible. I'm only astonished that you, as a Vulcan, hold forth such an opinion. In my experience, most Vulcans are rather - how should I say - convinced of their fundamental difference".
"Conceited about it, you mean, Lieutenant. You must take into consideration that I am a renegade Vulcan. Albeit my estrangement from my home planet was caused by other reasons, it has allowed me to view the culture I stem from with some distance, from the outside".
As if he felt he had gone too far, he turned to the clock above the display screen. "Your comrades are obviously not going to appear today. So you could really go as well and get yourself that coffee after all".
Startled by the sudden dismissal from the fascinating Vulcan's company, Äänekoski could hardly control his emotions. All he could to was veer his reaction to the very surface of what went on inside him. "Stop going on about your coffee", he groaned. "Although I am from Finland, I prefer tea!"
Suvuk regarded him with raised eyebrows and pulled-down corners of his mouth, an expression of the utmost amusement with him. The, he turned away without a word and returned to the display. Äänekoski gave up, suppressed another apology, and switched off his recording device. To his unending astonishment, Suvuk approached the small replicator other instructors used to get materials for experiments, and ordered, in a neutral voice, two mugs of black tea.
"If that is the case, you shall have your tea". He returned to Äänekoski, handed him one of the mugs, and, with the other, sat down on the chair before Jukka-Pekka in the first row, turning it around. "What I would be interested in hearing from you was how you argued the need for specialised exotechnicians with Starfleet command. On which theoretical foundations did you build your discipline?"
For a moment, Äänekoski couldn't speak with joy about the friendliness Suvuk so unexpectedly showed him. Then he realised that it had happened after all: deep inside he felt the unmistakable signs for exactly the inappropriate reaction he had hoped to avoid in connection with Suvuk. The Vulcan regarded him seriously and sipped from his tea. Of course, he still expected an answer.
"Well", Äänekoski managed to utter, "I did not plan on inventing a discipline. I only knew I wanted to specialise in alien technology and to be able to repair machines incomprehensible to others. I had the first inklings about that since my youth. But when I returned to the Academy three years ago, I realised that my discipline didn't exist. So I assembled a curriculum for myself from the existing courses, and was rather astonished when people started calling me an exotechnician, and thought I was doing something highly original. I thought there were more of my kind".
Suvuk pondered this, shaking his head. "Why? Starfleet needs people who can repair their own machines. Only after the Borg attack people began realising how important the understanding of alien technology is; the Federation was so especially helpless against them because they had nobody able to fathom the Borg technology. But even at this point I wouldn't have had the idea of educating technical personnel to become exotechnicians. You did show original thinking indeed".
"But I never planned to; I don't consider myself to be original".
"The human way of playing down one's strong points in an unrealistic way called modesty always seemed to me rather counterproductive. We are here to serve; but if we do not admit to what we are able to do, it will impede our service, Lieutenant".
"Interesting point of view, Lieutenant. If you think so, perhaps you can convince Starfleet next year to educate more technical staff to become exotechnicians. Especially as it should be obvious how convenient it would be for the outposts if they had personnel specialised on repairing alien machines":
"I already talked to the Academy leadership, and your ideas are now moving slowly through the mills of Terran bureaucracy. However, I will be unable to monitor the progress, as I shall not remain here. I intend to pursue my own research project".
"Which would be?" Äänekoski had dropped all caution; he was speaking in honest curiosity.
"The search for the traces of that spacefaring civilisation of cetaceans, of which you probably heard rumours".
"Of course I did. I would really love to get to dissemble a probe from that civilisation. It is amazing what those whales did with their communication and telepathy waves".
Suvuk was silent with astonishment. "You know", he said reflectively, "you just said something very valuable indeed. In their communications to us, the whales are so fixated on our use of shells that I never fully realised what the equivalent would be in their culture. I thought it was based on communication; but on a physical level, it isn't matter as with our culture, but waves. Shells are merely receptacles for waves; so what whales do with shells is not important. We are so fixated on matter that we never even asked the right questions. Sometimes it seemed illogical to me to teach this basic course, when I could have done research or taught specialised students during the time. Just now, you proved to me that my decision was right".
"We are here to serve, I for you just as you for me", Äänekoski said plainly. They looked at each other over their teacups, and for a moment a strange intimacy grew between them, as if they simply belonged together to tackle the universe from a common point of view.
All of a sudden, Suvuk got up and returned the mugs to the replicator, where they dissolved. "I shall wait no longer", he said in his usual cold and no-nonsense way.
He waited in front of the door until Äänekoski had left the classroom to then lock it by means of an encoded card. "Live long and prosper", he said curtly, turning around the corner.
Äänekoski looked after him, completely flabbergasted. This unexpected friendliness and the subsequent harsh rejection had been too much for his stirred-up human emotions. How close they had suddenly been, and how impersonal Suvuk's farewells had then been by contrast! It had first seemed to him that they were developing a common basis for a friendship, and now he stood here, left alone, and was never going to see the wonderful, astonishing alien again.
He felt like crying, and wandered off to his quarters in order to do exactly that over a few beers and some lapinpystit.
Suvuk stood alone in the turbolift and harshly criticised himself. The tea had definitely been the wrong move, but even the remark about the moulding influences of culture was too much. He should not even have encouraged the human to talk about the logistics board. As if he had never been educated to control himself, Suvuk had dropped one barrier after the other and had at the end looked the human in the eye, completely relaxed, and talked to him as an equal; and worse, as if they belonged together, as if there could be a connection. Suddenly he had begun doubting his in-Vulcan loneliness, suddenly it had not seemed necessary to keep up the reserve with which a Vulcan approached any stranger against Äänekoski. He had rarely committed such a capital mistake. He would need hours of meditation to regain his self-control.
Perhaps it was only that he was to expect the next bout of pon farr within the next year; perhaps his Vulcan instinct had started asserting he needed a bond-mate; but actually letting go of his usual coldness and severity towards an attractive human male, that was absurd. As if there was any escape from the monstrosity of his mere existence!