Lieutenant al-Kwaritzmi’s log, supplemental: we have established contact with the inhabitants of Zaminakö, who have invited us to parlay. But first, a tea ceremony. I am sitting down and talking with members of a pre-Warp society. It feels very wrong.

There was, a hundred meters away from the piers, a meeting place surrounded by buildings and tall trees, a fireplace in its middle, stones covered in hay to serve as chairs. The Syndic had guided the Starfleet group there, and ordered tea and food to be brought. They had seated, four aliens and four Limitöe, alternating one after the other.

The rest of the Limitöe looked, of course, from the trees, perched and still. Was the whole village there to look on? How many of them lived in the village?

“We have no customs for when creatures such as yourselves arrive at our village” said Syndic Rizör. “I hope we will not offend in any way.”

“It is us who do not want to offend or disturb, Syndic” said Iskander. “You would have all rights to refuse us any hospitality and help, if you wanted. I really want to make that very clear.”

“Even though you are much more powerful than us?” asked another Limitöe, who had been identified as Judge Bazïr.

“Power must teach patience” answered Iskander.

“We had heard that you weren’t very patient” remarked a third Limitöe, Guildholder Fawör. Unlike Rizör and Bazïr, Fawör wasn’t fancily dressed, and their simple dress was even stained. Iskander had the impression that “guild”, for them, was a term more akin to a worker cooperative or a worker union, and made a mental note of discussing it with Limkas later.

“There are two groups of interstellar aliens on Nidöe” said the Xindi communication officer. “We are quite different in most aspects, but we work together. We are the calm and patient ones.”

A couple of Limitöe brought the refreshments. They did so by carefully flying while keeping pots and crockery in their hind limbs, not in a perfectly graceful way but with a surprising effectiveness. They had brought two pots of some hot liquid, sweet and spicy, and a couple of large vases filled with what seemed to be some sort of fish paste and fruits. Eight cups and bowls completed the offering. All of these objects were made of simple materials — wood, ceramics, some glass — but elegantly decorated, indicating a civilization of reduced resources but skilled labour.

Ensign Pasteyr discretely scanned the food and nodded. It was probably safe to eat — nothing that would result in more than an indigestion.

“If you would like, Holy Girinöö” said Syndic Rizör.

“I would not like” said the fourth Limitöe. Contrarily to their companions, they had looked despondent and hostile the whole time, gazing at the four aliens with big, suspicious eyes. They wore a set of hairnets and necklaces and amulets. Iskander couldn’t blame them, for Starfleet brought no good news, and no present other than cultural contamination.

Girinöö’s response elicited an intense whispering among the Limitöe in the trees.

“You put me in great difficulty, Girinöö” said the Syndic. “I can’t do it for you, it would be hyrönz.”

The Xindi leaned towards Iskander. “The Holy is the town’s priest and medic” she whispered. “They are beholden to be the first to welcome foreigners by pouring the tea for them. Rejecting this rite is tantamount to a declaration of personal or religious hostility. The Syndic can’t fill in for the Holy, as that would break the separation between church and state.”

“I’ll do it” announced gruffily the Guildholder Fawör.

“You shall do no such thing, nephew!” protested the Holy. “This is a matter for a believer.”

“This is a matter of welcoming guests. The wind brought them here — shouldn’t you want to celebrate that?”

“Did the wind bring them here? Because I heard that they appeared out of thin air in the middle of the fields of Old Curüset. The wind didn’t move them, they have no wings. Did you, aliens, or did you not, appear out of nothingness?”

Iskander didn’t quite want to discuss transporters, but it was expected that the locals would notice. The Sternbach didn’t have enough many shuttles to cover all the assignments. “We have a technology that allows us to travel from one point to another, without having to walk in between” he said, carefully. “From our point of view, we didn’t cross any nothingness. We stepped from our starship to that field.”

“You have to tell us more, but the tea has to be poured first” protested the Syndic, but the Holy didn’t budge.

At the end, they agreed that Judge Bazïr was probably a good stand-in for the Holy, who nevertheless harrumphed and criticized the Judge’s technique. The tea was served. Iskander tried it: it was surprisingly savoury, but delicious. He just made a mental note hat the cups were very small, scaled to the Limitöe much smaller size.

The discussion meandered a little bit as the four Starfleet officers were bombarded with questions: what were their names? How did they speak the language so fluently, considering that this was a rare and difficult dialect? What were their species called? What was it like to not have wings? Did they have to walk everywhere all the time? Where was their spaceship, the Sternbach? Did the spaceship have wings? Why had a spaceships crashed on their planet?

The four Starfleet officers had been briefed very thoroughly, but Starfleet protocols contained relatively little instructions on how to proceed with the curiosities of pre-Warp civilizations. Did one have to discuss atomic theory, or evolution, or algebra, or sociology? How to effectively explain the structure and size of a galaxy to a people who had only developed heliocentrism?

All in all, the Limitöe were not to be underestimated. Due to them being avian and being able to fly around their world, the fact that their planet was round had been clear to them from prehistoric times. Their planet orbited a much larger gas giant which in turn orbited a red dwarf star; they had therefore never thought geocentrism was a serious possibility. But the question of alien life had only popped up inasmuch as some of their religions believed that the gas giant was home to a twin species of flying sentient beings, which they considered to be evil. The concept of intelligent land-dwellers went against their predominant view of biology — they thought that flying was the intellectual stimulus that was necessary to start cognition, and thus the reason why only they, on the planet, could think — and they had not discovered bacteria. In their industrial centres they were probably about to discover the Carnot cycle.

All in all, Iskander found it to be a very difficult discussion, which left the Limitöe frustrated at their reticence.

But the Syndic decided to put an end to it. “Friends, I understand that we all have endless questions, but our guests haven’t been driven here by the incoming evening rains. What we have heard, aliens, is that you always seek something. Speak frankly now.”

Iskander breathed deep. “We do not seek much, but what we seek is important to us. A toolkit has been lost. A box, roughly the size of this rock, of the colour of that plant. It contains a number of specialized tools. We need to retrieve it and then we will be gone from here.”

The Syndic furrowed his brow. “And you are sure that it is here? I know that the crashed ship of the sky scattered bits and pieces all over a large area of the northern desert, but it was nowhere near here.”

“We think it has been brought here, Syndic.”

It was the Holy Girinöö who intervened. “You accuse one of the village to have touched nämniköl and have been made tüerda, Iskander al-Kwaritzmi of the Sternbach?”

Some Limitöe perched on the trees made noise — hard to tell if in agreement or not.

“We accuse not” intervened Limkas calmly. “Or at least, we reproach not. How you take our words is out of our hands but doesn’t change our mission. We will look for the toolkit, trying to bother you as little as possible, and leave either with it, or with the certainty that it isn’t here.”

The Judge seemed to ponder the question. “Ownership is a complex thing amongst us. If the toolkit had been traded or sold between us, it would complicate the question of the legality, unless you want to take it by force, which would be theft but we presumably couldn’t really stop.”

That was a question that Iskander really didn’t want to ponder. The Prime Directive compelled any Starfleet crew to, at least, minimize the cultural impact on the natural development of a species, and superseded any sort of local laws about theft and ownership, of course. Not to mention, even an engineering tool would need maintenance eventually: in time its Romulan power cells would decay, get ruin, break, leak, and possibly explode.

“We are ready to give food or raw resources” said Iskander, carefully. If it came to it, he had been authorized to transfer discrete amounts of replicated local food, or aluminium, or salt.

“As trade?”

Trade would have implied that the toolkit’s ownership was open to be debated and transferred. It was better not to give that impression. “As compensation.”

The four Limitöe looked at each other guardedly. Girinöö was clearly still hostile, barely moved by any attempt to mollify them, but the other three seemed equally not pleased with how the talk was progressing.

“From the way you talk of this artifact you want to retrieve” said Guildholder Fawör, “one would think it is very powerful.”

“It is a versatile repairing tool.”

“Of a sort that is rare and special amongst your people, Lieutenant?”

“It is very standard, Guildholder.”

“So, not powerful. Is it very unique or does it hold spiritual or personal value?”

Iskander had to stop himself from saying that there were million kits like that, perfectly indistinguishable. “No.”

“Is it urgently needed for some… repair task?”

“No.”

It was not difficult to read suspicion in the Guildholder’s eyes. “It sounds to me that you do not really need it. Yet you say it is important for you to retrieve it.”

It is important to us that you do not have it, thought Iskander, but knew better than to say that.

Ensign Limkas thought best to intervene. “I have been reading the shared tales of your species. The story of the wandering Hämeriso is known in these parts of the planet, isn’t it?”

The four Limitöe seemed duly surprised that Limkas was acquainted with that story. Iskander wasn’t in the least acquainted, but he knew to trust his communication officer.

“It is known” said finally the Judge. “Are you claiming that you are like Hämeriso, or like the rich Dümarentä?”

“The similitude is imperfect. Unlike Hämeriso we are not servants, although we are lowly among our people. But like Hämeriso, we are compelled on a small quest of secondary importance by our moral code, and like Hämeriso we can’t explain why.”

The Holy Girinöö seemed skeptical. “You would cast us in the role of the rich and influential Dümarentä, who one after the other talk with Hämeriso and challenge the zaolä code in words and in action? Yet you clearly hold power, enough to destroy us on a whim!”

“This is your planet. We will be gone soon and the gusts will remain” said Limkas. “Remember what Hämeriso said to the fifth Dümarentä: what is power really — having a big stick, or owning the wind?”

The Syndic Rizör finally laughed again. “Maybe you are only trying to win us over with praise, but your skill with words is appreciated and your knowledge of our culture warms my heart. If you need our permission to look for the… repair kit… you have it. But I’m afraid I know nothing of its location.”

“We have our methods of investigating” said Ensign Pasteyr.

“We ask only that you let it be known we bear no ill intentions and want to solve our problem without harm coming to anyone” said Iskander, smiling. “If you could fly this message to the neighbouring settlements, we would be grateful. We want to depart soon, and as friends.”

The Syndic and the Judge nodded, while the Holy still seemed hostile, now looking away, and the Guildholder seemed to be studying a cup half-filled with tea.

Finally the Judge pointed at the food. The tea had been drunk with some enthusiasm, but nobody had yet touched the fish paste or the fruit. “Now we eat.”

Iskander found the fruit to be palatable if not weirdly savoury; Limkas, an obligate carnivore, praised the fish to no end.