Read Online By the Book by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Free Book Online Page B

them.
    He hoped.
    "What I'm trying to figure out," he said, "is exactly what I did to insult them."
    "You spoke out of turn," Hoshi said. She had folded one hand over the other and was watching him from her station. The tension he had noted on the planet was gone; apparently, she had expected the worst and it had happened.
    Archer felt a surge of anger and he suppressed it. He wasn't angry at his crew. He was angry at his own impatience. They had warned him to wait, and he hadn't. His actions had blown this first contact, not theirs, and they didn't deserve to be punished for his mistake.
    "What was I supposed to do?" he asked. "No one said anything else, so I couldn't respond. And it would have been rude to turn around and walk away."
    "In our culture, yes," Hoshi said. "In theirs, leaving would have been better."
    T'Pol nodded slightly.
    "Why?" The frustration in his voice was clear, even to his own ears.
    "The meeting was over," Hoshi said.
    "Not for me it wasn't," Archer said. "There was a great deal I wanted to talk about."
    "Apparently, they didn't want to talk," Hoshi said. "They probably lack a protocol for dealing with outsiders. They greeted you, then expected you to leave."
    "Without asking any questions? Without learning about us?"
    "How does a society that structured learn?" Reed asked. The question might have been rhetorical.
    Archer frowned at him.
    Reed shrugged. "They have dictates for everything. I presume they would also have dictates for learning. Protocols, procedures. A certain rhythm to the way that things are done."
    "And I'm supposed to just know this?" Archer asked.
    Hoshi sighed. "I should have guessed it. I mean it was right there before us."
    "We needed more study," T'Pol said.
    "If the culture has so much structure that they haven't even figured out how to deal with outsiders," Archer said, "no amount of study in the world is going to tell us that."
    "After time," T'Pol said, "we would realize those protocols were missing."
    "We would?" Archer said. "How much time?"
    "Study like this can take years," T'Pol said.
    "If we spent years on one planet," Archer said, "we'd be wasting our time."
    "I disagree," T'Pol said. "Caution is always preferable to haste."
    He stared at her. She tilted her head, her dark eyes cool. Her cap of brown hair hadn't moved when her head had, but the new position made her pointed ears more prominent. The superficial differences between humans and Vulcans were slight as well, masking the truly deep disagreements they had about the way they viewed the universe-and themselves.
    "You value caution too much," Archer said.
    "And your haste is what got you into this situation," T'Pol said.
    Archer turned away from her, looking instead at Hoshi. "Okay. We've already established that the Fazi had put me between the proverbial rock and hard place. We don't know if they would have been insulted if we left before they did either."
    "Not for a fact, no," Hoshi said. "But a lot of their rules center around speech. Action seems prescribed as well, but not to the same extent. Before we left, I mentioned the rules of the High Council. They were clear. No one could speak out of turn."
    "But they can leave out of turn," Archer said, his head spinning.
    "I don't believe that leaving was out of turn," Hoshi said. "If this had been a normal away situation, I could have told you that."
    "But, because we were following Fazi rules, you couldn't speak up," Archer said.
    "Right," Hoshi said.
    He spread out his right hand. "Rock." Then he spread out his left. "Hard place."
    "More study-" T'Pol started.
    "T'Pol." Archer made his voice sting with command. "You're coming dangerously close to violating a rule of the bridge. Don't nag the captain."
    "I hadn't been informed of that rule," T'Pol said with great dignity.
    Archer grinned at her. "See my dilemma? And how long have you Vulcans been studying humans?"
    Her eyes narrowed. He had gotten to her. That pleased him on a small, petty level.
    "The