A/N: Again, thank you for all the reviews. Yes, you find out some of what T'Pol learned in the meld in this chapter.
CHAPTER 7
Phlox was behind the partition in sickbay, feeding his animals, when he heard the doors to sickbay open.
"Phlox!" he heard Archer bellow.
"Coming!" Phlox called back, sprinkling larvae into a cage for his venomous Altrosian tree snake to eat. The creature was positively ravenous this evening. His hand holding the food canister jerked when the captain yelled again.
"Now, Phlox!"
Startled by the rude summons, Phlox almost dropped the food canister. The captain was clearly impatient, so he set down the canister and bustled out from behind the partition into the treatment area. Without a word, he took in the scene -- the captain placing an insensate Sato on the biobed with the monitoring equipment, the Vulcan science officer standing a few paces away. Normally, Phlox wasn't one to be rushed, but the captain didn't seem to be in a good mood, so he hastened to grab a medical scanner from a nearby tray. He approached Sato and began taking readings as Archer stepped back. Phlox was glancing covertly at T'Pol, wondering what she was doing here, when he noticed her strained expression.
Another look at Archer's stony face was enough to confirm that now was definitely not the time for Phlox to anger the captain by taking his time. He busied himself with his patient, who he noted was back in the drab apparel she'd been found in. He switched on the monitoring equipment and re-ran the initial scans from the hand-held unit. "Elevated blood pressure and rapid heartbeat, although it appears to be slowing," he announced. He checked one of the screens above the bed. "Extreme activity in the brain, much more than is common in a human."
The symptoms of his unconscious patient could be caused by any number of things. The presence of T'Pol, however, who was showing un-Vulcanlike signs of stress, narrowed the possibilities. Taking care to keep his tone neutral, Phlox said, "She fought a mind meld, I take it."
Archer looked to T'Pol, who answered, "Quite the opposite. She cooperated fully."
"Hmmmm." Phlox considered. "Given her history, or rather the lack of it--" Archer cleared his throat impatiently, and Phlox hurried on. "Given that she was suffering from amensia, and the hyperactive state of her brain, I would say her memory has returned. A lifetime's amount of information, flooding back suddenly, could account for her mind shutting down."
"She's going to be all right?" Archer asked.
"Probably." Phlox shrugged. "We won't know until she wakes up. Her subconscious needs some time to sort everything out."
"How long will that be?"
Phlox resisted the urge to shrug again. The captain always wanted answers immediately, and could become quite irritated when he didn't get them. As carefully as he could, Phlox said, "Impossible to determine." When the captain's face darkened, he added defensively, "This is not the kind of thing that can be measured."
As Archer mulled that over, Phlox took the opportunity to say, "Commander T'Pol, you look out of sorts. Perhaps I should examine you."
"No," she responded, almost vehemently for a Vulcan. At Archer's quizzical look, she added, "I have performed numerous mind melds. I would be aware if my brain had sustained injury. It has not. I do not require the doctor's...services."
The last came out with a disdainful sneer, which pleased Phlox. He rarely got a reaction from her. Not that he had expected her to take him up on his offer, but there was no harm in trying. There had been a few times when she had required his care. For the most part, however, she preferred to take care of her health herself through the use of healing trances and other Vulcan mystical practices. He sniffed. She must think that by suggesting he examine her, he was just being his usual, lascivious self. Which, of course, he was. He didn't think he could be faulted, though. When the women on board paraded around in those skimpy uniforms which didn't cover their arms and left their midriffs bare, men's minds naturally turned to certain things. He was only Denobulan, after all, and he'd been away from his three wives for a long time.
"Does she need to stay in sickbay?" Archer asked, gesturing at Sato.
Ah-ha! thought Phlox. The captain is more interested in the woman than he was trying to let on. She was pretty, in a human sort of way, Phlox supposed, but the captain could have his pick of females from the crew, so it wasn't just that the captain found her attractive. It must be because she was unique, a creature from another universe. And apparently, rare in any universe. From what Phlox had overheard in the mess hall at lunchtime, this Sato person had undergone extensive language testing earlier today, and the scuttlebutt was that she could speak more languages than the entire crew put together. That was no small feat, considering there was a fair number of aliens aboard the Terran Imperial ship. They were servant species to the humans, although some were less subservient than others. Denobulans might not rank up there with humans, but they certainly weren't far down on the ladder, either.
"Doctor?" Archer prompted.
"I'm sorry, Captain. My mind wandered for a moment." Phlox checked the readouts on the screens above the bed. "Her blood pressure seems to be stablizing, and her heartbeat is back within a normal range. Although I'd recommend she stay in sickbay, I don't believe there's any reason she can't be moved to your quarters. But if you do," he warned, "I would advise that any type of distress be reported to me immediately. I can be at your cabin at a moment's notice."
"You better be," Archer warned him. He picked up Sato, then headed for the door, T'Pol following in his wake.
Phlox called after them, "I'll want to check her after she regains consciousness."
Over his shoulder as he strode out of sickbay, Archer said, "I'll try to remember that."
Phlox wondered if that last comment was supposed to have been sarcastic. Sometimes it was difficult to tell with humans.
Captain Archer told T'Pol to come with him. She followed him into his quarters and, after he'd settled Sato in his bed, she waited as he commed Cunningham to bring some food. At his inquiring glance, she shook her head slightly.
He told her bluntly, "You look like hell. A little nourishment might do you good." Turning back to the intercom, he ordered Cunningham to bring a bowl of plo'meek soup for T'Pol before he cut the connection.
No sane person argued with the captain without good reason, so she would eat some of the soup to appease him. When he indicated she should sit, she moved over to perch on the edge of the couch. His solicitousness did not fool her. He wanted to know what information she had gleaned from the meld.
He sat down at his desk and got right to the point. "Have you been able to process anything from the meld yet?"
She nodded curtly. "Much of it is still coalescing, but I believe I understand enough now to give you a brief overview."
"Go ahead."
T'Pol took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts, before she spoke. "Her name is, as we know, Hoshi Sato. She is an ensign in a quasi-military Earth organization known as Starfleet. Her assignment is as the ranking communications officer on board the flagship, Enterprise, where her language skills have proven invaluable over the last four years."
The fact that Sato had had difficulty adjusting at first to life aboard a starship was irrelevant, and of no interest to the captain, so she refrained from mentioning it. "Although the ship's primary mission is exploration and first contact with other species, it has been embroiled in a number of conflicts." Drawing another deep breath, she concentrated on an area of Sato's memories that were particularly turbulent and vivid. "Her Earth was attacked by the Xindi about two years ago at the instigation of a transdimensional species."
When she paused, Archer said, "The Xindi? In our universe, didn't they destroy themselves millenia ago fighting amongst themselves?" At T'Pol's nod, he continued, "Obviously Sato's Earth survived, or she wouldn't be here."
"Yes, although her memories of that time are confusing. She feels guilt about something that happened during the conflict. She aided the enemy, although it was against her will. She felt ashamed and violated."
Archer raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything.
"While there was an unconsciously imposed barrier around her memories which I was able to breach, there is a blank area concerning how she arrived here," T'Pol said. "It is conceivable that she may never remember how that happened. If you consult Doctor Phlox, I am sure he would tell you that head trauma cases often do not recover memories immediately prior to the event that caused the injury."
Archer snickered. T'Pol's thinly veiled dislike of the doctor, not to mention Tucker and most of the rest of the crew, never failed to amuse him. "I'll take your word for it," he said. He got to his feet and began to pace, throwing an occasional glance at the woman in his bed. "But what about the technology in her universe?"
T'Pol braced herself. The captain was going to be disappointed. Sato was a linguistic genius, and had little background in tech other than what was needed to operate and maintain the communications equipment on her ship. That she could pilot a shuttle was still something of a novelty to Sato herself. "Her primary area of expertise is communications, which is not surprising considering her facility with languages. Of technology, she knows nothing more than the basics. She is not an engineer, although she does possess an aptitude for programming."
Archer's pacing had taken him near the bed, where he stopped and frowned down at Sato. "That probably ties in with her talent for languages."
"Yes. Various forms of programming are considered languages in their own right," T'Pol said, relieved that the captain hadn't been overly upset to learn that his hopes of gaining new technology from Sato were non-existent. "There is one other thing."
"What?"
"Many of the people she now remembers from her universe have counterparts here."
Archer swung around to face her. "Really?"
"Yes. There is a Captain Archer in her universe. A Doctor Phlox. A Commander Tucker and Lieutenant Reed. Even I apparently have a counterpart in her universe."
Archer studied her closely, and T'Pol realized she hadn't been able to hide her feelings about what she'd found in Sato's memories. "There's something else, isn't there?" he asked.
"While there are many similarities between the two universes, there are fundamental differences," T'Pol said reluctantly.
"Such as?"
How could she explain that Sato came from a universe where humans hadn't forcibly claimed the dominant role, where the barbaric nature of humanity had been overcome? True, humans in Sato's universe resented Vulcans to some degree, not because of race hatred, but mainly because of the Vulcans' own perceived superiority. But that hadn't prevented humans from willingly working with them. Even more startling, T'Pol's counterpart was a trusted officer -- the first officer -- of that Archer's Enterprise. That was something that could never happen here, where she had already obtained more than she could ever hope to have by rising to the position of science officer on the empire's flagship.
There were some things the captain did not know that would not hurt her either, she decided. But she had to tell him something. "The humans in her universe are not as aggressive or strong as in the Terran Imperial Empire. In fact, her Earth does not have an empire, just a few scattered colonies. Instead, they seek alliances."
Archer smirked. "And how is that going to be a problem for us?"
"She may compare the two universes and find this one...cruel," T'Pol temporized, "making her unreceptive to your wishes."
Archer laughed. "As if I'd worry about cruelty." He chuckled again, and turned to look at Sato. "Do you think she's going to be all right?"
"You mean because of the meld?" T'Pol asked. At Archer's nod, she thought for a moment. "I do not believe she was harmed. It was, as the doctor said, an incredible amount of information for her to assimilate at one time."
The question now, T'Pol thought as Archer continued to gaze at the other woman, was how Sato would react to re-found memories, and to the fact that she was a long way from her home. She was among strangers who looked like her friends, but most definitely would not act like them, if what T'Pol had seen in her memories was any indication.