As soon as she’d passed through the paddock archway, Pattie felt safe. With only emergency lighting to see by, she still knew the square shadows of terminals, imagined the computer-generated neural maps marked up with Zoë’s notes covering the walls, and recognized the smell of Tarak’s favorite zeeflower hip tea seeping in a kettle. While Pattie strolled around, reacquainting herself with this favorite place, she eavesdropped on Zoë quizzing Tarak about what he’d experienced during the quakes.

She shared Zoë’s relief that none of the lab experiments or data storage had been damaged; the computer had finished the day’s final analysis before the first tremor. Tarak, always methodical, had stowed all their equipment and backed up their data shortly after Zoë had left to meet Pattie’s transport. He’d even had time to deal with the lighting problem. Ingenious Dr. Tarak had rigged makeshift lighting using the elements from a spare computer and an old transtator. Anticipating (logically) that they might be hungry, he’d lit an old-style lab burner to warm a leftover pot of stewed kaino root. Pattie lapped the porridge out of her plate, grateful for the nourishment. They spoke little, comfortable in the silence of friends.

After they’d eaten, Tarak flipped on a fuel-cell powered viewscreen so they could see the updates as they came in. All three settled in to watch; Zoë and Tarak sat cross-legged on a rug they’d thrown on the wood plank floor while Pattie sat in a hammock chair suspended from the ceiling. Tarak had wrapped a blanket around Zoë’s shoulders; she huddled against him, her visible relief a marked contrast to Tarak’s neutral expression.

They watched without comment as footage played and replayed with different expert analysis. As Pattie had hypothesized, the oldest township branch sectors had escaped almost unscathed. Watching the pictures of various township sectors flash across the screen, she puzzled through possible questions. Why had the lab, for example, sustained no damage even though it didn’t benefit from any of the latest engineering designs or materials, and why had sectors like the transport center—which had been designed to withstand a quantum torpedo—nearly collapsed? Conclusions were few: the Planetary Science Council had already ruled out meteorological and seismic causes. A worrisome analysis proposed that the host trees’ root systems had become destabilized.

They listened to reports for a few hours before the scientists and officials had nothing new to offer. Commentators indicated that investigative teams would be dispatched to the lowest level observation decks at the end of the night cycle.

“They should go to the bottom and get it over with,” Pattie muttered as she watched the screen cut between views from various lower-level cameras.

“An interesting thing for a Nasat to say,” Zoë said, raising an eyebrow.

“Just because most of my kindred are phobic about spending time on the forest floor doesn’t mean I share their apprehensions.” Especially when circumstances are serious enough to require it, she thought. And this might be one of those times.

“What about the security service teams that go missing when they have to visit the floor?” Zoë argued. “The flash floods, the quicksand. The countless other legitimate dangers that Nasat, hell, that softs face if they go down to the bottom. Can you explain those away by phobias and prejudice?”

“You can’t live without taking risks. Walking out your door. Visiting the market.” She paused, quirked a smile at Zoë and added, “Picking up a friend at the transport.”

Zoë laughed heartily. “Point taken.”

Pattie had enjoyed this kind of banter with her crewmates and was glad she could have similar conversations with her old teachers. Though Pattie had spent more one-to-one time with Zoë and Tarak than almost anyone else on the homeworld, most of their interactions in the past had been focused on helping Pattie become a fully functioning member of Nasat society. Their discussions about culture or politics had focused on how those issues related to the lab’s research or how they impacted Pattie. Now that she’d “grown up” and become a peer, Pattie sensed the shift in their relationship; she enjoyed it.

“I never would make the mistake of lumping you in with the rest of your kindred,” Zoë deadpanned. She winked at Pattie, quirking a gentle grin.

Pattie shrugged. “I understand where the traditions come from. My kindred spent a thousand years struggling to rise above our beginnings in the caves and dark places below. Developing the technology that allowed us to live in the canopy instead of in the mud and dark of the forest floor was our first step in becoming a space-faring people.”

“Why ‘going to the bottom’ is seen as regression has always puzzled me,” Zoë said. “The Nasat don’t want to preserve their past, their history. Where you’ve come from. In my twenty seasons here I’ve never seen a museum, read a commemorative plaque, or met a historian. If a building has outlived its usefulness, the Nasat tear it down and start again, regardless of how significant the location is.” She looked to Tarak to add his own observations, but his response was limited to a single nod.

“My kindred have always perceived that cutting ties with the past frees us up to progress. Newer is better. If we fully embrace the past, we risk being trapped in it.”

“Do you believe that?”

“You’re asking the wrong Nasat.” Pattie laughed. “I’ve spent the last few seasons working with species who tote four hundred-year-old relics around from posting to posting simply for sentimental reasons. And from what I’ve seen, that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe some of their craziness is rubbing off on me.”

Tarak reached over Zoë’s lap and clicked the viewscreen off. “The comnet is no longer broadcasting any new or useful information. Should the township have further delays in fully restoring power, we need to preserve our resources.” He stood up to stow the portable viewscreen in a cupboard.

Zoë yawned. “Right now, we don’t have any students living here. You can choose any nest you want if you’re ready to conclude your waking cycle,” she said, pushing down another yawn.

“If you require sleep, please don’t stay up on my account,” Pattie offered. “I’m a full cycle away from needing to rest.”

Tarak and Zoë exchanged glances; his eyes narrowed, she shrugged.

“Understanding the situation at hand would be of greater benefit than what would be gained by allowing our physiological processes a regenerative period,” Tarak said. “We will remain awake until such time that the need to rest is equivalent with the need to gain knowledge.”

Grinning gently, Zoë patted Tarak on the thigh. “What he’s trying to say is that we’ll stay up with you if you want.”

“I haven’t heard an update on your research,” Pattie prompted.

“No new breakthroughs, if that’s what you’re asking,” Zoë said.

“It appears that ‘quiets’ hatch at a uniform rate planetwide, regardless of shell color or geography,”

Tarak explained. “When all hatchings are statistically analyzed, one can hypothesize that there will be approximately one quiet in every seven hundred and fifty hatchings.”

Pattie had always wondered whether her own limitations would be passed to her larvae. She felt relieved knowing that her offspring might escape the struggles she had acquiring communication skills. Impressions of her own early days in this lab floated into her consciousness.

Oh how afraid she’d been at the prospect of having her mind probed by aliens. The stories she’d heard! That quiets were being offered to the Federation to be experimented on. In the end, however, her fear of being condemned to a life of silence overcame her fear of the alien softs. She’d discovered a petite Betazoid redhead who had been the first to give words to her feelings. And Tarak: a silent, methodical Vulcan with his neural scanners and his endless hours in the nurseries, watching the nurturers pass information to their charges.

That was where he’d found Pattie, in the nursery. Two seasons old and still mute. She had only vague memories of Tarak asking a nurturer if he could “talk” with her. The nurturer had laughed at the ridiculousness of the request. And then the gentle probing of Tarak’s telepathy had been the first time someone had understood her thoughts and fears, though her mouth couldn’t form the words. How many lives had they touched since hers?

She hadn’t seen any Nasat around the lab tonight, though. “How many students do you have?”

“We’ve recently graduated thirty-five,” Zoë said, pouring herself a cup of zeeflower tea. “Recruiting has been slow, but I’m confident that the Planetary Council will encourage more quiets to take advantage of our program.”

“You’d have more support in the capital township,” Pattie said. “The Federation has a stronger presence there—new ideas are embraced with less skepticism. Nasat and alien live side by side and no one questions it.”

“But what about those quiets who don’t have anything close to the resources offered in the capital? They’ll be forever consigned to menial tasks, to being alone. We can’t abandon them just so we can go where our work would be better received.”

I owe these two so much, Pattie thought. How can I ever repay them? “I’ll see if I can search out quiets among the newly hatched. I’m sure the nurseries would be happy to be rid of them.”

Zoë smiled. “Now then, why would the nurseries want to be rid of their quietest charges? At least they can find a cycle’s rest with the quiets.”

“What else are you planning for while you’re here?” Tarak asked.

Pattie’s mind shifted back to the thoughts she’d had on her journey from the transport to the lab. I will make a difference. “These quakes. I’m confident my engineering training could help in the ongoing repairs. If not my skills, my limbs. I can work a plasteel seamer with the best of the construction workers.”

“I could sense your mind moving a mile a minute on our way back here,” Zoë said. “But I thought you were on vacation. Your last communiqué was ambiguous—I had the impression you’d been under a lot of stress.”

“Our last voyage ended…badly. We lost many crew members.”

“Communicate our regrets to Captain Gold when you speak to him,” Tarak said.

“I will. In the meantime, the best way for me to work through my experiences is to stay busy.”

“We’ll help in whatever way we can. Right, Tarak?”

He nodded his head affirmatively. “If your need for our assistance has diminished, would it be permissible if I retired for the remainder of the dark cycle? I believe I will be more efficient if I can rest before the light cycle begins.”

“Please,” Pattie said, waving him in the direction of the sleep room. “I still have several cycles before I require rest. Don’t stay up on my account.”

Tarak nodded politely in Pattie’s direction. He looked to Zoeannah.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk with Pattie for a bit longer.” An almost imperceptible exchange passed between the softs—Pattie almost imagined he smiled—and he exited the room.

“So…you’re probably wondering about—”

“How long have you and Tarak been—”

“More than research fellows?” Zoë finished with a wry grin. “About a year, though we’d gradually been heading toward being involved since his mate Tu’vara disappeared with the Cairo near the Romulan Neutral Zone. You never would have known by watching him, but the psychic bonds Vulcans have with their mates…”

“Having touched minds with Tarak as a pupil, I can guess at what might have been between him and his mate. You must have been a great comfort to him.”

“I don’t know about comfort, but our work gave him an outlet, a place to focus his efforts. With both of us so dedicated to our work, developing a more interpersonal connection was a natural evolution of our work relationship.”

She studied her friend, the softness in her eyes, her almost-smile. “You seem happy. Though I wouldn’t have ever put you two together. I have to admit that as soon as I realized that you had feelings for him, I was a little surprised.”

“I knew you had it figured out as soon as I observed your body language when I was talking to Tarak over the comm,” Zoë said, blushing.

“Body language? I’m a Nasat. We don’t really have body language.”

“I’m a Betazoid,” Zoë teased. “I sense body language.”

“Of course,” Pattie said dryly.

She dropped her eyes to the ground. “As you might expect—he was very logical about proposing our…um…uh…partnership.” She adopted a matter-of-fact tone, mimicking Tarak’s speech patterns. “‘Establishing a mutually beneficial domestic arrangement with me is more practical if I decide to live here permanently,’ and so on. Very carefully thought through. Not quite the emotional exuberance that most Betazoids expect from their partners—” she blushed “—but he compensates in other ways.”

“Oh.” Pattie felt comfortable about not asking Zoë to elaborate further. Softs placed an importance on their romantic—and by corollary—their sexual relationships that was completely foreign to Nasat. The idea of emotions and sociological connections forming around copulation wasn’t anything Pattie could figure out. Reproduction was like eating or resting—a bodily function that was carried out at the appropriate time.

Yawning again, Zoë stretched and rubbed at her eyes with her fists. “You mind if I sleep?”

Pattie smiled. “Of course not. I spend all my time working around you weakling softs so I’m used to all the pampering you require. Sleep, food, water—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Zoë said, laughing.

Once she’d vanished into the private quarters, Pattie turned the viewscreen back on, hoping that new information had come to light. During the fifth time through a particularly heavily damaged branch sector, Pattie’s sharp eyes noted something she hadn’t picked up previously. “Computer, save newsfeed TS2, channel 4, 0212 to 0220 to lab database.” The computer squawked an acknowledgment. She replayed the footage, sharpening the resolution on specific shots, pulling the view closer and closer until she could see the rivets in the floor, but the anomalous characteristic was fully discernible. What have we here? Certainly not evidence of seismic activity. Maybe defective building material? Or…something more dangerous. Satisfaction suffused her; she had her first lead. We have ourselves a mystery.