A Camelot Knight in Starfleet Command
A further adventure in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot
And parody loosely based on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
By Bineshii
Chapter 3: Getting to Know the Crew
After his talk with Brian, Lancelot watched the boy slowly drift off to sleep. So he went to the crew mess hall and tried a mug of this beverage called coffee. He sat at a table by himself at one side of the mess hall sipping the warm brown liquid and watching people come and go. They generally sat with those they came in with but a few joined others who were already sitting at tables. The tone of conversation was informal and quiet, unlike back at Camelot where new arrivals were generally greeted formally and loudly. He was thinking what healthy, happy people these were – no beggars with missing limbs holding out bowls while sitting in the shadows of the castle walls, no threadbare peddlers insistently hawking their wares in muddy streets. But this was a ship where all the crew must have been chosen for their fitness and mostly consisted of young people. It was hard to believe this ship was bigger than most villages and was a community in itself. He hadn't even seen the outside of the ship through images of it on a wall or one little model that the captain had.
Lancelot's musing was broken by someone standing across the table from him.
"May I join you?" asked Crewman Cutler, carrying a small tray of food.
"Oh," said Lancelot, rising and inclining his head slightly. "Of course, My Lady."
The woman smiled sweetly and sat, setting her tray on the table. "Goodness, you don't have to be so formal, I am not the captain, just Crewman Cutler, or, and as I would prefer to be called, Elizabeth."
"Lady Elizabeth, I am Lancelot of the Lake, at your service."
"Oh my, how gallant you are. I don't need any service performed; I just wanted to get acquainted with you. You looked so serious and lonely here all by yourself. Of course I have heard about you from the usual ship scuttlebutt. And I have read the Arthurian legends like everybody else, as a child. We must be a very strange group of people to you. And it is just plain Elizabeth, really."
Lancelot thought for a moment before he answered, for indeed he was still trying to sort out how to deal with people here, let alone not make any wrong turnings down the vast corridors of this ship.
He smiled, the smile he used with ladies that he was interested in. "Elizabeth," he pronounced her name with care, "people are people, everywhere, and every place in time, I should think. At least that is what I have been discovering. What do you do on this ship?"
"I am a crewman, first class. I work in ship's maintenance, changing out computer parts and small motor repair like kitchen appliances. But I am doing some cross training with Dr. Phlox as a medical assistant in sick bay. Most of us on the ship cross-train; it keeps us flexible for emergencies."
Lancelot was fascinated that a person like this, equivalent to a seamstress or a blacksmith's assistant, would approach him - a knight who sat at the captain's table for meals, with her lack of timidity and total friendliness.
"That is very interesting work," he said. "I now know what rooms here you would work in but I am afraid I am ignorant of the skills involved."
Back at home, he would have known the details of any person's work from tillers of the soil to the negotiations of kings.
"Your world is so...technically complex. In my time, machines, if you could call them that, have maybe four or five parts. Here you have machines with millions of parts. How can I express this...it stretches my mind to conceive of it."
Just then, Dr. Phlox strode across the room with a mug in his hand and scraped back a chair, sat, and plunked the mug down on the table. "May I join you?"
"It seems you already have," said Lancelot, surprised and slightly annoyed.
"Elizabeth," Phlox continued, "when you feed my bat today, only half ration please. He seems a bit listless and may be entering his hibernation phase."
"Of course, Doctor. And the leeches, am I to separate them into two tanks? There are so many of them now."
"They are not really leeches, not like the ones on your world. No, do not separate them. They thrive in crowds."
"Leeches?" asked Lancelot. "Now there is something medical that I am familiar with."
"Oh?" said Phlox. "Ah, yes. Well, my leeches are not the primitive life form your Earth leeches are. Mine are medically useful, unlike yours. Civilizations, it seems, have to go through a lot of experimentation with useless so called cures until they discover how biology really works, humm?"
"If you say so, Doctor Phlox," said Lancelot. "But I am not going to say that to Merlin who swears by them, or Queen Guinevere, who oversees our healers in Camelot – if and when I get back."
"That would be highly prudent," Phlox beamed. "They probably would not believe you anyway."
"Yes, I am a soldier, not a healer," grinned Lancelot, though he was extremely curious about Phlox's knowledge of human and alien physiology. The differing life spans of sentient species and the ability to extend these life spans was terribly interesting.
"Well, back to work," said Elizabeth, rising from the table. "Please don't get up, Sir Lancelot."
Lancelot, who had started to rise, sat back down.
"Me too. Must return to sick bay. Come by for a visit any time," said Phlox who rose and walked off chatting with Elizabeth.
"I think that I will come for a visit. Or two," Lancelot said quietly.
Lancelot took another sip of the coffee. It seemed to elevate his energy level, but he did not like the taste. It was better with something called sugar to sweeten it. But this sugar was not from beats, it was from sugar cane which grew in another part of his world that he had never heard of. He returned to watching people, a little envious of their informality and ease of use of advanced technology. They seemed to have no personal problems. Were they all so happy in this time period? Even with the horrifying weapons that they seemed to live with without great concern?
...
Lancelot and Brian where getting used to the routines on the ship. They were developing a habit of visiting 'the gym' once a day and hanging around Malcolm and his security people and the MACOS. These were more like the people they hung out with back home. The weight machines did help to keep their conditioning up. And practice in hand-to-hand techniques was not only good exercise, but educational. These types of skills were familiar to all of them and they were sharing new moves with each other.
Amanda Cole, the female head of the MACOS, was amazed at how short humans were centuries before her birth.
"You're pretty tough for a little guy," Amanda grinned between bouts with Lancelot.
Lancelot took a moment to control his temper. "Yes, Mam. My world is a dangerous place."
"So's mine," quipped Amanda. "At least the places in it that I choose to go."
Lancelot nodded and dropped back into his wrestler's crouch. He would try another couple of moves of his own before he asked Amanda to show him the one that she had used to slam his back down into the mat. It had taken him several falls before he understood it was okay to fight back and wrestle with a woman.
During a break, as they toweled sweat away, Amanda told Lancelot about the Xindi attack on Earth.
"five million people? I doubt there were five million people on all of Earth in my time!" said a shocked Lancelot.
"There were actually 300 million in your time, from estimates. There are ten BILLION on Earth in our time," Amanda informed him. "I thought the question would come up during our conversations, so I looked it up."
"Very astute of you," said Lancelot. "So your town was missed by this giant ray from space but Commander Tucker's town was turned into a hole in the ground?"
"Part of a deep trench hundreds of miles long. The ocean filled it in. Trip's sister was killed, but the rest of his family was away from their home town at the time."
"My god. And these Xindi, there is now peace with them? Did your ship do equal damage to their planet?"
"No, we only stopped them from doing more damage to our planet. And now they want to join this alliance we have with three other worlds. But even though they said they are sorry and it was a mistake based on lies told by another group of aliens they used to be allied with, the Earth government says an alliance with them will be considered maybe a hundred years from now when most of the people who lost family in the attack have passed away."
"No retaliation? Well, I guess humans have learned to control their aggression better than in my time. That gives me much to think about."
They returned to their practice, but Lancelot wanted to talk to Captain Archer about this attack and the people of Earth's response to it. The captain being much higher in rank than this woman-at-arms, might be able to give him more insight. And Commander Tucker had lost an innocent sister who he was very close too, Amanda had said. Tucker was still grieving, she informed him. Maybe people in this time did have some emotional trauma like people in his own time.
...
The door to Captain Archer's quarters slid open for Lancelot and he stepped in, glancing around at the images on the wall. Ships. And on the computer, some sort of water play with a ball."
"Water polo," the captain said, indication a guest chair. He turned off the computer.
"I enjoy our visits. Would you like some coffee?"
"No thank you, Captain. I am curious about this Xindi attack on Earth. Amanda Cole said the damage, that trench, could be seen from out in space."
Archer leaned back in his chair and sighed. "That is so."
"And I heard that your ship stopped further attacks alone. And that you personally negotiated with some of the aggressors, making it possible to stop other aggressors who wanted to destroy the Earth. Yours seems a very superior war ship to be acting along against a civilization of aliens."
"True, we did that alone, but the logistics warranted it. But our ship is not just a war ship. We and the other Starfleet ships were meant to be ships of peaceful exploration. Of course we have always been armed, and even better armed now after that attack on our home world. The Vulcans, our mentors, warned us that the universe was a dangerous place. In fact, for a hundred years they tried to slow our progress in warp technology development because they thought our species was not psychologically ready to control our aggressive tendencies. They thought we would either misuse our new technology to hurt other species or be wiped out by a more advanced species as the Xindi tried to do."
Lancelot thought this treatment of different alien species as inferior or superior sounded like those Vikings who had kidnapped him and Brian and called them a lesser breed worth only of enslavement. He was disappointed that the universe had not overcome this practice. So he commented "The Vulcans again. You have a Vulcan on your crew. She is your second in command."
"She has been here since our first mission on this ship. At first, she was little more than a spy, but she defied her own people and is one of us now. I trust her with my life. I even trust her with my ship."
Lancelot smiled. "I see you place your ship's safety above your own."
"Any captain worth his rank does. Besides, it is powered by the engines my father invented."
"Then he must be proud of the way you made use of them."
Captain Archer's face became sad. "Yes, I think he would have been if he had lived to see them put to use. I used to blame the Vulcans for him not living to seeing that. They delayed us, did everything they could to slow our warp development. Their sense of the passage of time is different. Vulcans have longer life spans than humans. At one time, I was very angry about this. Now, I accept that their intention was to help us, even if misguided."
Lancelot was impressed with the circumspection of this man in the face of a great personal loss. If most people were this thoughtful in this future time, the human species had indeed progressed to greater emotional control. Lancelot though of something else he wished to learn about.
"This alliance, and talk of a future binding of worlds into a federation, is this in defense of something? Are there other enemies now that the Xindi are no longer a threat?"
"Very perceptive of you, Sir Lancelot. Indeed there are. There are hostile worlds, even empires of worlds that sadly, seem bent on conquest of all the worlds they can reach. The Klingon Empire is one such. In fact, the first mission of my ship was to help a wounded Klingon who had been chased by an enemy of theirs, right onto our own planet. We returned this wounded Klingon to his home world, but there seemed to be only grudging gratitude from the Klingons. I would say, from your earlier experience, the Klingons have been visiting Earth for centuries. Fortunately not in large numbers. Until now, we have been of little interest to them."
"So they are a threat now?"
"Not openly. They do have spies on our world, I am sure."
"So that is your only worry?"
"No. Some aliens called the Romulans, from what we hear through our intelligence agents, are concerned about the alliance we are making. They think we are getting too powerful and we think they may try a surprise attack. So Vulcan, Earth, Andoria, and Tellar are pooling their resources, cooperating in sharing technology to build ships to repel any attack. We are experimenting with defensive ships of mixed species crews. And we have built up trade networks."
"I see. Well I do hope you succeed and that one day, these hostile empires will be peaceful."
"That seems to be the way of the universe, Sir Lancelot, larger and larger groups of sentient beings living at peace. At least it is a worthy goal."
"King Arthur would agree with that. I think he would be proud of that."
"He was one of the people from our history who started us along the path to peace."
Lancelot nodded. He was more than ever proud of his king.
...
They had been three weeks now, on the ship. Captain Archer had tried a second time to contact Daniels through a device the time agent had left him, without success. Lancelot and Brian were starting to discuss what their options were if they could never be sent home. The captain told them if Daniels did not respond within another two weeks, the two of them would be sent planet-side to live in the Britain of this time period. The Enterprise had an upcoming mission outside the solar system and it would not be safe for them to go along. Malcolm Reed told them not to be disappointed to find nothing left that might be familiar to them in their homeland accept maybe the ruins of a Roman bath house in the town of Bath.
Brian was disappointed about not going on this upcoming mission because it would involve visiting both Vulcan and Andoria. He was studying hard in the basics of navigation that Travis was teaching him and did not tell Sir Lancelot about this, as he wanted it to be a surprise. Brian was big on surprises. He also wandered into engineering and asked Trip Tucker about things he had overhead concerning the different kinds of engines driven by steam power or petroleum derivatives. He was shocked to hear that the black stuff that bubbled out of bogs back home could take the technology of a civilization to a whole new level.
If he had to live his life here, Brian decided he wanted to be an engineer like Trip Tucker, even though he felt closer, personally, to Travis. Travis and he talk about things like whether he was the same person because he was reassembled with different elements in his body when he was transported here. Trip Tucker was more about the details of technical stuff than the psychological effects of machines like Travis speculated about. And Travis talked about the concept of evolution – in bio systems and in culture and technology. Brian asked Travis about ways to shorten the typical pattern of evolution in technology that most worlds went through. Ideas about this made him glad that Merlin had told him all about the Greeks and the rudiments of the discipline of science.
Lancelot made comments to Hoshi Sato about the lack of color on the ship, even though the computer showed a template with hundreds of color shades. When she showed him images from the Earth of architecture, works of art, and clothing styles showing a wide variety of color, he was enchanted. He also started visiting Dr. Phlox more to hear exciting things about the complexity of the human body. If he was to be stranded in this time, he thought he would like to continue being a warrior, but he would get training to become a warrior who fought disease and helped people live pain free and longer lives.
If they had to stay in this future time, it looked as if the many options available might draw Lancelot and Brian in different directions.
...
Escorted, Brian and Lancelot were allowed to visit Jupiter Station when the Enterprise was moored between tests of upgrades of system components in near-Earth space. They found the food in the Vulcan and Andorian restaurants not much to their liking, but the Tellarite amusement center, which Amanda Cole said was holographic technology, fascinated them. Lancelot taught Amanda a bit of sword play in what she described as a simulated medieval environment. Then they went to the science and natural history museum, a small place which depended on holographics too, and was called a Smithsonian Institute Extension Site.
The curator of the museum, a short balding man who spoke rapidly with an annoying lisp, was enthralled with Brian. The boy had put on his chainmail, sword, and eating knife because Amanda had told him about the simulator where they would 'go back to his time'. Lancelot had decided not to bring his own gear as Amanda had also said that clothing and weapons would be part of the simulation. When Lancelot and Amanda had walked on to other museum displays, the curator grabbed Brian by the wrist and pulled him into his small office.
"Now, boy, these artifacts that you are wearing, are they really from your time?"
"Of course, Sir," Brian said. "And this extra tunic of mine still has dirt on it from my world as I did not put it in that magic cleaning machine with our other clothes."
The Curator's eyes gleamed with greed. "Now, boy, how would you like to make a trade, eh? I have a kit that you can make a real working steam engine with. See, right here. And how about a small really working gasoline engine? I paid close attention to your questions as we went through the history of technology hall."
"Well, I think it would be alright," Brian said eagerly. "Sir Lancelot gave me this eating knife, but I could always get another one back home. Not my sword though, or my chainmail vest because it took me all winter to make it. But since I am still growing, I have this section of chainmail that I am using for a belt that I had planned to extend my vest with. I could give you that."
The man's eyes lit up even more. He knew what Brian was offering him was worth a fortune because it could be authenticated by experts.
"Okay, boy. You may have these kits."
Brian was scratching a bit. There were fleas in the tunic which he hadn't washed yet. And now the curator was starting to scratch.
"Sorry," said Brian, "these fleas, they jump from person to person. I think I picked them up at Sir Ector's castle. I was wearing both tunics because it was cold the night we were abducted, but I only washed the one."
"Fleas? Genuine medieval fleas? May I have the tunic too? I will give you a museum souvenir T-shirt to wear back to the ship."
"Okay," said Brian, "but the fleas will get on that too, because they are on me already."
"Tell you what, boy, I have these magic bracelets. I will give you one and perhaps that will solve the problem."
The curator dug into a drawer in his desk and removed a magic bracelet from a package of them. Brian tried it on. It was a little large but there was a way to adjust it.
"Thank you!" Brian said. As he left the office minus his knife and belt, he saw that the curator must love his pet cat very much because the animal was sitting on a chair wearing a bracelet just like his, but around his neck.
Elsewhere in the museum, having seen the march of centuries in the museum displays had put Lancelot into a pensive mood. He went off by himself and slipped into the hydroponics garden. He was thinking about this Prime Directive that seemed to be bound to become one of the alliance of planet's chief rules, according to the 'on to the future' museum display. Pre-warp civilizations were not to be contacted by post-warp civilizations because it might destroy their life cycle. This was a novel assumption, at least for Lancelot. The assumption was that everything had a life cycle whether it was a living thing or not – everything from a tree to a planet to cultures and technology. Anything could grow, stagnate, and then decline.
Lancelot had tentatively grasped this from his talks with Captain Archer in the context of why he and Brian should be returned to their time period as soon as possible. He understood decline from what was happening to the Roman civilization which had been retreating from Britain. And he now had from this museum curator, a term for what a small change in the past could mean to the future: butterfly effect.
Lancelot was sitting next to a pool into which a small waterfall was plashing. It was a nice background for deep thoughts. From the museum, Lancelot saw how long it took for the march of history to go forward from hunting and gathering cultures to the human invention of warp drive. It had been a near thing, the destruction of Earth by its own people and then by aliens. That scar in that peninsula called Florida had burned itself into his psyche. A catastrophe like this must not happen because of anything he or Brian did. It must not.
...
Lancelot sat on his bunk and held the knife across his knees, applying the wet stone. It had been days since he had done any maintenance on the personal equipment that he carried with him since he was a young boy. The door slid open and Brian came in, excitement all over his face. Lancelot put down the eating knife he was sharpening and watched as Brian went to the computer and tried to turn it on. Lancelot waited for the reaction.
Glancing at Lancelot, Brian asked "What's wrong with it? From Travis I got an idea about how we can shorten the time we will be using steam power and go right on to gasoline engines once we use steam drills to extract the petroleum from deep in the Earth. I want to research exactly how we can design a steam engine for that."
"There is nothing wrong with the computer, Brian. I have asked Captain Archer to turn ours off."
"But why?" asked Brian in the high range of his voice which had been breaking lately, in the early stages of becoming his adult male voice.
"Because Captain Archer has finally heard from Daniels and he is coming here soon to see about sending us home. And because it is wrong for us to learn these things of the future. We should not know technology that is not of our time unless we ourselves invent it. I think it was other minds than yours or mine which did the inventing that led to what you see on this ship. You and I are soldiers. From what little I know of the future legends surrounding us, we only help King Arthur with his marvelous ideas of fairness and justice. These ideas will be passed down the generations after us and help advance our civilization."
Lancelot leaned forward on the bunk and clasped his hands tightly.
"I don't want to know any more than that we are important to this effort. I don't want to know who I will marry, if I ever do, what children I will have, when I will die or how I will die. All this about me is in the legends, though there are conflicting stories about it according to Captain Archer. I don't want to know any of them. He agrees with me on this. And I agree with him that I should not learn the details of any technology that we just might put into use before its time. We will not be taking back any samples of the technology of the future and tinkering with it. We will certainly not tell Merlin, for he would pounce right on it and might have us making weapons hundreds of years before we could psychologically deal with them. He and the other technical wizards of our time could probably really do it, you know."
Lancelot looked straight at Brian with that look of determined finality that Brian knew so well.
Brian stared back at Lancelot, very put out and on the verge of real anger. "I too saw those moving pictures of those planets which destroyed themselves with nuclear bombs, just like you saw them. Knowing the dangers, don't you think we humans are smart enough to prevent that? How could you reject all the great technology we could have right now! Imagine no more women dying in childbirth! No more men dying of ugly painful sword wounds! Enough food so no one starves to death!"
"Brian, there is a mental growth, a political and social growth that has to happen for a people to deal with these things. Do you think people like Urgan the Strong and King Marhaus are capable of that growth?"
"No, not them. But King Arthur could handle it!"
"But can King Arthur handle all the Urgan the Strong's and the King Marhaus's of our time?"
Brian did not answer. He turned his back on Lancelot and laid his head on his arms on the computer desk. Lancelot stood up and went over to the boy. He laid a hand on Brian's shoulder. Brian didn't say anything and didn't move. He knew when Lancelot was serious enough about something that no amount of wheedling would move him, but he was not yet ready to accept it.
Lancelot sighed and left their quarters to walk the companionways of the ship and further contemplate all that had happened to them since their abduction. With what he had learned in the last couple of days, he revised his opinion about these people on this star ship being all very happy and to be envied. They had emotional problems as vexing as those of people in his time. He now understood that phrase Captain Archer mentioned which was from a century long after his but long before Archer's: the more things change, the more they remain the same.
...
Brian could not remain long in a black mood. It wasn't in his nature and the boy was a very forgiving sort, at least to those he was close to. So with a grin, he coaxed Lancelot into joining him at another place on the ship which he had discovered.
Pushing up the hatch, Brian signaled Lancelot to precede him.
"What IS this place, Brian? It looks to me like one of those maintenance spaces we were told not to access," said Lancelot frowning.
"Travis brought me here. He said it was okay for me to show it to you. Just boost yourself through this round hole and then standing on the floor, jump up."
"What?" asked Lancelot, looking around as he stood on the floor of this small room. "This is an empty chamber going way up to nothing at all, just a high ceiling with another hatch up there. I can't jump high enough to reach that. What is this all about, Brian?"
Brain gave that mischievous smile of his. "Just try it, My Lord."
Lancelot was feeling that this was foolish, but since only Brian was watching, he bent his knees and jumped. He sailed up - more than the power of his jump would have suggested. He didn't come down from his jump and in almost panic, flayed his arms and legs. This made him spin sideways then tumble...still rising up.
"Ouch! Damn it! Brian! What on Earth!"
He had bumped his head on the upper hatch.
"Not on Earth. On Earth, Travis said, it is gravity that keeps us down," said Brian, effortlessly rising and stopping himself easily just under the upper hatch. "It is like this outside the ship, in space, Travis said. No gravity. No pull in a downward direction on your body."
"You could have told me, Brian!" said Lancelot, bumping his elbow against a wall which sent him caroming against another wall which sent him backward. "How do you stop?"
"Make slower movements, My Lord."
"Fine. I think I am starting to get it."
"You will learn it faster than I did since you have better coordination. You seem to be adjusting already. I spent two hours up here practicing."
"Okay, Brian. I know that you are getting back at me for turning off the computer."
"No, My Lord. I planned this before you did that. I guess I will have to think of something else to get you back at you for turning off the computer," grinned Brian. "Now where did I store that pea shooter?"
Lancelot glared at Brian. Then he broke into uncontrollable laughter which almost sent him spinning off in this strange place again.
Brian tried to repress his own laughter when Lancelot grabbed him by both shoulders and sent him spinning in a circle. The effort sent Lancelot spinning too, both of them laughing too hard to regain control for a couple of minutes. They had not had so much fun together since before they had been abducted to this star ship.
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