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“I’m not teaching classes today, so you can go away!” a voice called from behind the greenery.
For a moment Saru tensed, fighting the instinct to run, but Georgiou put a hand on his arm.
She gave him a small, amused smile. “Trust me, her bark is worse than her bite.”
Saru nodded, and waited.
“Come out!” Georgiou called. “Your trees can stand to wait a few minutes. There is someone here who would very much like to meet you. The cadet I told you about?”
“I told you, Philippa, I’m not taking any new students!”
Saru fidgeted. He wanted this, but he’d been anxious since they stepped off the shuttle, imagining all the ways it could go wrong. “If this is too much trouble…” he began, but Philippa waved him silent.
“Hoshi!” she shouted.
“Fine, fine. I’m coming.” An elderly woman emerged from the garden. She was human, and her gray hair was tied up in a long tail. She had on a pair of thick gardening gloves and from the looks of it she’d been in the midst of a hard battle with a thorny vine. She set a pair of shears on a low stone wall.
Her eyes went right to Saru. “This is your cadet?”
“Yes. Please try not to scare him too much.”
Saru gave a small bow. “I was told you are a teacher of languages?” he said in Japanese.
Her eyebrows went up. She replied in the same language. “I wasn’t expecting that. Nobody who’s not from Earth speaks Japanese these days.”
“I found a lexicon in the educational files,” Saru explained, hoping desperately that he hadn’t overstepped. “It was… quite fascinating.”
She tugged off her gardening gloves and offered him a hand. “Lieutenant Commander Hoshi Sato, though I’d prefer not to use that title anytime soon. I’m retired, or at least I’m trying to be. Certain people are making that difficult,” she added, with a not-so-subtle glare towards Georgiou.
Saru shook her hand and introduced himself. “Saru. Cadet Saru,” he amended.
Sato nodded. “Hmm. So, you know a few words of Japanese. Anything else?”
“I’ve studied English, Arabic, Korean, High Vulcan, Andorian - the mountain and Aenar dialects, mainly, and Standard and Lunar Denobulan. And Federation Standard Sign as well. I- I attempted Saurian but some of the sounds are, er, not comfortably achievable…”
He trailed off as Commander Sato studied him.
“You’ve got a Universal Translator,” she said, tapping just under her ear. “Why bother learning all these languages if my algorithm can do it for you?”
She was testing him, he could tell that much.
He turned his hands in the air, looking for the right words to explain. “The UT is an incredible piece of technology, and it has allowed an untold amount of communication among so many disparate species.” But she wasn’t looking for praise for her invention. “But I find that language offers… an insight into a people’s culture that might otherwise be overlooked. A way of connecting across seemingly-insurmountable barriers. And… it feels only a matter of respect to learn to communicate in the manner most suited to your audience.”
“Good answer.” She nodded, making an approving sound. “We could have used someone like you on the Enterprise.” She shook her head. “We were out there and we barely knew anything. Sometimes being able to talk to people was the only thing we had.”
“The Enterprise.” He had studied Earth’s first ship, and the captain and crew who helped found the Federation. “Your service to Starfleet is legendary.”
“I suppose,” Sato said, with a self-satisfied smile. “But I know you didn’t come here for a history lesson.” Without even a pause, she followed that up with a string of rapid-fire questions in Andorian asking Saru about his classes and teachers and what parts of Earth he’d visited.
He answered them all as best he could in the same language, deftly avoiding a few puns and idioms he was sure she’d put in there to fool him.
“Good.” She continued in Vulcan, and he responded in kind.
“I’ll leave you two to chat,” Georgiou said, and wandered towards the patio table. “You’ve got anything to drink?”
“T’Pol sent some spice tea I think you’d like,” Sato called after her, and ignored the look she got in response. She turned back to Saru. “Well, as I said, I’m semi-officially retired, but I’ll make you a deal.” She picked up the gardening shears. “I’ll talk as much as you want, but you have to help me deal with this mess.” She gestured to the vine choking her garden. “Philippa said you like plants.”
“I would be pleased to assist,” Saru said.
“Good. Come here.” She led him to the garden shed and piled him down with supplies. Clearly, she appreciated having a willing assistant more than she’d admit.
“I watched a recording of your lecture on the color tones used by Aveni storytellers,” Saru said. “I found the different written interpretations fascinating. One would hardly know they were the same language without a guide.”
“I had such a good time studying that,” Sato said, smiling fondly. “I didn’t get to talk about it in the lecture, but some of the most highly-regarded storytellers serve meals with their sessions. The different courses are meant to follow the story, and they have spices that correspond to specific emotions or even entire plot points and character archetypes.”
She pushed one more item - a case of laser knives, it looked like - into the growing pile in Saru’s arms, and led him back out into the garden.
As they got settled, she resumed her questioning, and didn’t let up once, switching languages and dialects so rapidly he could barely keep up. He was so focused on the patterns and sounds of the words that before he’d realized it he’d told her a lot more than he’d planned to about his time at the Academy, and about the subjects that interested him. And the ones that challenged or troubled him.
“Sounds like you’re doing a lot. Hope you’re taking some time to rest too.”
“Ma’am?”
“Philippa told me a few things. Nothing in detail,” she added before he could worry what she thought, “just that you’re concerned about being good enough.”
Saru sighed, and tugged a piece of vine free from where it had ensconced itself through a crack in the stone wall, using the brief moment to attempt to order his thoughts. “There is so much I still have to learn,” he said. “And so much of it is things that my fellow classmates have been aware of from birth. I have had to study not only their languages, but their cultures, their manners, and their history.”
“At least you know what’s important,” Sato said. “You’d be surprised how many officers - high ranking ones too - won’t even learn basic courtesy before they visit another world or welcome an alien delegation. The problems we had with the Kreetassans…” She laughed and shook her head. “Starfleet training can’t be easy if you grew up without even having computers. But people have managed it before. I’m sure you can too.”
“It is more than that,” Saru admitted. “My people… we have evolved to sense danger and death, because we are constantly subject to them. The sensations and environments here are… difficult for me, in a way they aren’t for other students.” If he faltered, it would disgrace not only him but his entire species in the eyes of the Federation. “I cannot give them any reason to think Kelpiens incapable.”
Sato stabbed her trowel into the soil. “Well, that’s ridiculous. From the sounds of it, you’re doing enough work for five people.” She turned to face him, forcing him to pause in his work to listen. “Philippa told me you found your way off a pre-warp planet all on your own. That’s incredibly impressive. So if you’re worried about what people think, don’t be. And remember that when you run into tough things in space, you’ll have a whole crew with you.”
“So I hope.” Saru nodded and turned back to extricating the vine. He felt a little foolish for exposing his fears so plainly, but he was coming to realize Sato wasn’t going to let him worry.
“If it helps,” she started, “I completely freaked out on my first mission with Archer.”
Saru looked up. “Pardon?”
“They don’t teach that at the Academy?” She snorted. “I guess that’s for the best.”
“If I may, what happened?” He wouldn’t usually have asked just to sate his own curiosity, but he didn’t think she would have mentioned it if she didn’t intend to share the story.
“We were investigating an alien ship that wouldn’t respond to hails,” Sato summarized. “Turns out, that was because everyone was dead. They’d been killed by someone who wanted to harvest their bodies.” She shivered and shook her head in disgust.
“A terrible thing to see on your first mission,” Saru said. Death did not alarm him, but he understood her fear, and he mourned the murdered aliens.
“I screamed when I saw the bodies,” Sato admitted. “Being in the spacesuit was bad enough, but discovering that… it was too much. I didn’t want to go back. I almost decided to give up and go home to Earth.” She snipped through another section of vine. “But I kept working. I went back to the ship and I learned enough of their language to call for help.”
Saru made a mental note to review more of Enterprise’s mission logs. He wasn’t going to fool himself into thinking he was anything like those early explorers, but maybe he could learn something from how they handled unfamiliar situations.
Sato tied up the remains of the vine in a tarp and gave it a hard kick. “There, I think that’s taken care of that. Next time I get a shipment of seeds I’m going to scan them twice so this doesn’t happen again. I wish I could burn it, but I’ll settle for shoving it in the matter recycler.”
At her direction, Saru hauled the bundle off to the side of the path for disposal.
But that wasn’t nearly the end of the work. When he returned, Sato held out a tray of saplings. “I want to plant these in a row in that bed over there,” she said in Rigellian, a tongue Saru was less familiar with, but her gesture from the tray to the patch of dark soil made the meaning more than obvious.
They worked in quiet for a little while, digging holes for the saplings and tucking their root bundles into the soil. Evidently Sato had decided to give him a break.
“I would be honored to hear some of your native language,” she said after a while. “You learned mine. It seems only fair.”
It was only then that Saru realized that nobody else had asked before. He glanced down at the sapling in his hands, took a quiet breath, and recited a Kelpien poem. It was one of his sister’s favorites, the one she used to ask him to sing nearly every night.
“That’s beautiful,” Sato said when he was finished. “What does it mean? I think there was something about the sea, and a dangerous bargain?”
“It tells the story of a sea spirit chased from island to island by an angry storm,” Saru explained. “She attempts to escape by turning into a bird, but the winds smash her against the rocks, destroying her powers and nearly killing her. In the end, her lover makes a bargain with another spirit to save her by permanently turning her into a beautiful fish with silver scales. She survives, but the two may never see each other again.”
“That’s a sad story," Sato said in hesitant but clear Kelpien. "But it’s a lovely poem.”
He hadn’t spoken his own language in months, and he hadn't expected the feelings that would come with hearing it again. He took a breath to steady himself. "Thank you."
Tragic as it was, Saru thought, the sea spirit's end was a happier fate than he would have faced if he had stayed on his homeworld.
He dug his hands into the soil to pluck out a few stones that might get in the way of young roots. He was here now, and he owed it to Georgiou and all the others who had given him this opportunity to work as hard as he could to deserve it.
While Saru cleaned up inside, Hoshi fetched tea and a bright blue bottle of Andorian ale. “A gift from the Ambassador,” she said, pouring Philippa a glass.
“I trust this means things went well?” Philippa asked. “It certainly sounded that way to an uneducated ear.” She settled back in her chair and studied the glass before drinking half of it in one swallow. “And not to mention, you got a tidy garden out of it.”
“Very well. I wouldn’t mind working with him again. I've never met anyone besides Phlox who understood the changes in sentence structure between classic and Lunar Denobulan.”
“Good, good. You two can share comms codes. I think he’s very pleased to have made a friend.”
He certainly was. But that wasn’t the only thing on Hoshi’s mind. “You’ve got a promising officer here, Philippa,” she said. She glanced at the door to make sure Saru wasn’t back yet. “Watch out for him, though. I’m sure I’m not the only person that boy’s trying to impress.”
Philippa nodded. “I know. But there are things he has to learn for himself.”
“He can’t learn anything if he burns himself out trying to prove he can,” Hoshi insisted.
“Fine, I’ll keep an eye on him,” Philippa sighed. “But I’m not going to be his babysitter. He has to adapt.”
“That’s not-“ Hoshi began, but Saru was coming back already and he’d hear them if they said any more.
She offered Saru a seat and a cup of spice tea, which he accepted gratefully.
“Thank you for taking the time to meet with me,” he said.
So polite. That would serve him well in Starfleet, but only if he also knew when to stand up for himself.
“It was fun,” she said. “I’m starting to reconsider declining that lecture Admiral ch’Tarash wanted me to do at the Academy.”
“I would be pleased to attend if you do,” Saru said.
“No promises,” Hoshi said, reaching for her teacup. “But I‘ll think about it.” Maybe getting involved with the Academy again wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, especially if there were more students like him, eager to learn all they could about the many forms of communication in the world.
She’d learned she still had a lot to teach them.