Chapter 9: Learning Experiences

Shaking off the first shock about Trok's disappearance T'Pau found herself in familiar territory – taking the lead. Having mistaken their intentions for a climbing tour on one of the continent's mountain ranges, a human Lieutenant Mayweather had given her a backpack with what he deemed necessary for the activity. Unwilling to spurn the gesture for diplomatic reasons she had taken the additional baggage with her. Now it would become a vital asset.

While she had never participated in such an activity, she had seen others on a specially built wall in the gym at the United Earth Embassy on Vulcan. Which meant there should be a harness used to tie herself to the end of a rope, but before that she had to organize the situation.

"Stand back!" she ordered when some of the Andorians advanced on the opening in the ground that had swallowed Trok. "There may be more unstable ground."

She took out her communicator and hailed her contact at SOLCOM. "T'Pau to SOLCOM: medical emergency. I repeat: medical emergency!"

"SOLCOM, acklowleged. We have your coordinates. How many are injured."

"One," she reported calmly. "One crew member fell into a rift."

"We are dispatching a search and rescue team. Stay where you are."

"Grev, lay in course, half impulse," Hoshi ordered.

Hoshi felt bad for Trip. He was torn between trying to respect T'Para's wishes by granting T'Pau a maximum of freedom, but also had to make sure that nothing happened to her. And now she was taking out Buran to collect the very same T'Pau and a group of Andorians from just about the most hostile environment Earth had to offer. She really didn't envy Trip at that very moment.

T'Pol had told her about their time in the Forge and had described T'Pau as reckless. Hoshi began to see how she came to that conclusion. Walking off into the coldest climate on the whole planet was quite a strange idea. At least she didn't seem to be injured as, according to SOLCOM, it was her who had summoned help, so there was hope after all that she was able to play a few more games of poker with Trip, an activity that had become a favorite pastime of theirs.

Quite inappropriately for the situation, Hoshi felt an urge to chuckle when she realized that she had been in command of ships more often than her husband lately. Malcolm was caught up in organizing the security forces and with such a big station it was a monumental task. When he was not able to reach the ship in time, Hoshi had shoved off as acting captain.

T'Pau checked the harness and the fastened rope one last time and got down to the ground. The bigger area of contact would relieve pressure on the potentially brittle snow covered ice. Slowly she began crawling forward towards the opening, while the Andorians kept the rope tightened, ready to yank her back if the ground gave way.

In mutual agreement the group had decided to start with the rescue effort. Even with an emergency shuttle start, rescue forces would need at least fifteen minutes to reach them at their remote position. As she neared the opening she could hear the groans of pain from the rift's bottom. That meant Trok was both alive and conscious - a sign of hope. Time was apparently of essence.

Reaching the opening she saw that Trok was wedged in a depth of about 10 standard meters. His left arm was twisted in an unnatural position and a wound on his head released a small trickle of blood. Slowly she twisted over the edge of the rift until only the rope kept her from falling.

"Down, slowly!" she ordered and the Andorians complied, lowering her into the rift. She used her legs to direct herself towards the stricken companion. When she had reached him, she loudly ordered a stop.

"Can you feel and move your extremities?" she asked.

"Yes, a bit too acutely for comfort," he groaned, not quite able to give any more feed back

"This will alleviate the pain," she said and administered a hypospray she had removed from one of his pockets, which had been unreachable for his uninjured arm. When the pained grimace faded from his face, she hoisted his uninjured arm around her neck and slung her left arm behind his legs to hoist him into a position in which he could cling to her.

"Up!"

She felt how she was slowly drawn up with the barely conscious Andorian, mainly stabilized by her left arm, close to her. She could hear the other Andorians groan under the strain of hoisting up two people, but she also heard human voices, deducing that rescue forces had meanwhile arrived. When her head appeared out of the opening, the Andorians let out whoops and cheers and T'Pau was gripped by a moment of panic as she feared the excitable Andorians could let go of the rope, but the four blue men and two women held the life-line firm in their hands. When she was out of the rift, she was lying on her back next to the opening and let Trok slowly roll to the side so he came to a stop next to her.

A team of Starfleet medics rushed to their side and a Denobulan Doctor started scanning the Andorian while the other Andorians enthusiastically celebrated the Vulcan's achievement.

When the doors to sickbay opened, Feezal didn't even need to look. It was either one of the Andorians or the Vulcan woman who had rescued him. With an impossibly wide grin she acknowledged that she had been right when a petite Vulcan lurked about the privacy screen.

"Come in, T'Pau," a groggy voice from behind it instructed and Feezal followed her.

"Just five minutes," she instructed. "Mr. Trok needs to rest."

Both patient and visitor acknowledged her instruction with a nod.

"How are you?" T'Pau asked, worried by the fact that his arm was in a massive cast with screws that had actually been screwed into his arm.

"I've been better," Trok said, his antennae drooping back. "But I'll live. I owe you for the rest of my life. Whenever you need help..."

"With a whole planet taking orders from me, I do hope it will never come to that," T'Pau said softly. "But I do appreciate the sentiment."

"If only half the Vulcans are as brave as you, I'm glad we are not enemies anymore," Trok declared sincerely.

"Get well soon," she answered and took his offered uninjured hand. "If your tour here is finished, maybe you wish to consider a posting on Vulcan?"

"As much as I wished to, but your planet is too hot for me," the Andorian said. "As much as the Imperial Guard wished to make it look otherwise in the past. We are not even half as heat resistant as they made out. But I do appreciate the sentiment."

T'Pau raised an eyebrow to hide her amusement and stood to go. "I will visit you again tomorrow," she said and left.

Trip was lying on the floor, face down, out cold.

At least that was, what T'Pol was considering a desirable situation while Hoshi worked her way through the instructed program of neuropressure ministrations.

"What the bloody hell was she thinking," Trip ranted. "Getting sloshed with a bunch of Andorians in the friggin' antarctic! They could have done god-knows-what to her?"

"Stop it!" T'Pol demanded, not missing the irony of being a Vulcan, who defended Andorians. "I know Mr. Trok. He would never allow something like that to happen. And there were two Andorian women with them. One of them didn't ingest any Ale. They would have defended her if needed."

"Still... ," Trip started, but his rant ended in a wince when Hoshi pressed her thumbs forcefully into his back.

"Just shut up, Trip," she said, cutting off both him and T'Pol. Her annoyance was clearly showing. "It may not have been the smartest idea, but on that tour she did more to improve relations between Andoria and Vulcan than all diplomats put together. And now keep your irritating mouth shut and start breathing properly!"

"Hey!" Trip protested her blunt approach.

"Save it," Hoshi replied. "You're naked and I see no rank insignia. In here you are Trip and I have my thumbs on your off-switch. You decide. You either face plant the bench or you listen to T'Pol explaining the situation to you."

Trip was stunned into silence by the double-pronged berating.

It had been an incredibly long day. Hungry and longing for some of his wife's marvelous cooking, Charles Tucker jr. shuffled into Cathryn's mess hall. His wife brought him the promised plate of pan fried catfish and placed two plates with pecan pie on his dinner tray. She tilted her head towards a table with a solitary person sitting at it. T'Pau sat at a remote table and looked like lazily stabbing away at a salad.

"May I?" he asked when he had walked over.

"Of course," T'Pau answered.

"Normally I shouldn't be able to see it, but for a Vulcan you look mighty troubled, honey," he said.

"I may have antagonized krei Charles," she confessed. "He was fairly disconsolate earlier today when he learned what had happened during our excursion."

"Well, getting' yourself wasted in an environment where you need all your senses wasn't exactly something you can challenge Einstein with, little one," Charles noted.

"Indeed," she agreed morosely, quite openly expressive for a Vulcan. Charles chalked it up to her exhaustion and the still lingering shock of realizing what could have happened. And then there was the fact that despite looking like a grown woman, she was basically just a Vulcan teenager with no idea about the pitfalls of life.

"But then, that's exactly how kids need to learn their lessons and Trip better get used to it, because I ain't got no time to wait twenty years on some pointy-eared grand kids."

"You wish him to learn to be indifferent if his future children engage in foolish activities?"

"If you prevent them from doing stupid things, they'll never learn. Did you learn something from drikin' the Ale?"

"Not much, except not to repeat the experience," T'Pau said.

"That's all, you need to know," Charles said. "Would you have learned the same if you didn't get drunk?"

"No," she admitted after thinking about it.

"I'm tellin' you something about your clansman," Charles continued. "As a kid Trip always loved to be at his grandparents house. They didn't make up so many rules as Cath and I. He loved tinkering with our hover cars, but we always forbade it, because these things can give you quite an electric shock. But he wouldn't listen and waited until he was at my folks."

T'Pau stared at him with rapt attention.

"His grandparents didn't have such problem with it. They allowed him to disassemble and reassemble the thing as much as he liked – until one day, when he was zapped so hard he peed his pants. Guess what, he never did that again and found himself something less electric to tinker with."

"I see the logic," T'Pau admitted. "Letting someone make the bad experience is more effective than just an unexplained prohibition."

"Now you got it," Charles said with a smile and handed her one of the plates with pecan pie.

"This looks like mostly sugar," she said.

"It's sweet," he agreed. "But T'Pol digs it a lot."

He grinned, observing how T'Pau carefully tried a first bite and soon let the second and a third follow.

"I am still concerned about krei Charles," T'Pau confessed.

"Don't worry, honey," Charles said with a chuckle. "Hoshi and T'Pol are setting him straight as we speak."

She raised an eyebrow at him and Charles started to wonder if T'Pol had a sister she never knew about. On T'Pol that particular eyebrow configuration meant, 'I'm asking you for clarification without actually asking you for clarification'.

"They meet every second evening in the spa, because Hoshi practices this neuropressure stuff on him. I'm sure there's a program for stress relief."

Charles nearly laughed when she dropped the spoon as if it was hot.

"T'Pol lets another female administer neuropressure to her mate?" T'Pau asked.

"Sure, she sits right next to them to make sure that Hoshi doesn't break her husband."

"This is unheard of. A Vulcan would never let another female touch her mate so intimately, much less one that wears as little clothing as is required for neuropressure."

"Th whole four of them are unheard of," Charles said with a chuckle. "I'm tellin' you; one day I'm gonna get a subspace message from Andoria sayin' that the four of them have married as a quad. The only reason that Malcolm isn't with them is because there's so much water in there."

"Why does T'Pol not practice with Hoshi herself and why not in the privacy of her quarters?" T'Pau asked, still visibly confused.

"She did at first, as far as I know, but her Vulcan muscles are too hard for a little thing like Hoshi, so T'Pol gave her a softer target."

"But the privacy of ones quarter would surely be safer?" T'Pau argued.

"Why?" Charles asked back. "The Spa is locked. Nobody can get in. And they're pragmatic people. They don't get much free time. So they combined their spa time with the neuropressure training."

If a Vulcan's mind was mechanical, I'd be hearin' a lot of grinding noises from the gears turnin' right now, Charles thought with a mental cackle. The poor confused girl before him was probably just realizing that Trip was in the Spa with two naked females.

Hoshi and Malcolm lay in their bunk, closely entangled, still basking in the bliss of a passionate bout of love-making.

"What's wrong love?" Malcolm asked. "You're awfully quite today."

"I had a bit of a spat with Trip," she admitted. "He got so hung up on not getting into trouble with the Eldest Mother that he became totally irrational over T'Pau's trip to the antarctic."