What Words?

Keywords:  Vissia, memoir.

Related episode: “The Cogenitor”.

Disclaimer:  I own no part of Star Trek Enterprise.  No profit made, no infringement intended on the rights of CBS Paramount.

What words I have wished to fling at Commander Charles Tucker!

For years, the memory of his vessel, as much as that of his name, made me want to rage, to cry, to rant!  Why, why, why did our Vissian ship have to meet the one from Earth?  The one called Enterprise?  Why did my husband and I believe it a good idea to socialize with its crew by sharing a meal with the chief engineer?  The very thought of both encounters made me shake with grief!  I never knew which emotion hurt the most.

“Try not to think of it, Calla,” my husband said.  “Try not to think of him.”

But beneath my resigned and waiting silence, those feelings continued to batter at my aching heart and even more, at my empty womb.

If there ever had been words invented that could express my fury at Tucker’s audacity, I never found enough of them to ease my bitterness.

He was a stranger to our people.  What made him think he should interfere with our ways or with the family my husband and I yearned for a chance at having?  Why would Tucker suggest the cogenitor whose services had taken so long to obtain, was not well treated when we gave it a soft, warm bed and the most nutritious food our ship could provide?

He said it was intelligent and should be talked with, taught, even given the same freedoms that males and females have.  We tried explaining that cogenitors make up only three per cent of our population and we must keep careful track of their actions so as to ensure their safety.  We need to know where they are at all times, so they can be utilized most effectively.  It would be a disservice, teaching them to read, encouraging them to question, to seek some diminished future!  There are no Vissians with a more important role in our society than theirs.  They control the fate of our species.

But Tucker didn’t recognize that importance.  Instead, he obsessed over the idea that our cogenitor had no name.  Why would it need one of its own, when its name is that of every family on Vissia?  He saw only the curiosity lighting a single pair of eyes when he made it promises he had wishes, but no means, to keep.

Because of him, our child was lost to the cogenitor’s suicide.  My heart grieved, my womb ached for that child we never had, the one who never received the name of my husband’s grandfather or my favorite aunt.  That child who never received anything at all.

It was almost three years before another cogenitor became available to us.  But to our surprise and delight, after only two months, we learned we were to at last have our child!

My pregnancy was joyously uneventful, and my delivery, a year ago now, was without complications.

Our child is as bright and curious as I had hoped for while I grew large and sat dreaming of teaching him or her to count and to read, perhaps encourage to study engineering one day, or to travel the mysterious and beautiful stars.

As I stand here, looking down into its bright and eagerly upturned eyes, I wonder now what words I might wish instead to say to Commander Charles Tucker.