AFTERWORD

I'm imagining the comments even as I write this:

· “Whoa… there's a lot of sex and sex talk in that story. Was there even a story?”

· “How could you do all that to Parihn? God, I really liked her… and I'll never see her in the same way again. I didn't want to know all that shit about her life!”

· “May I now at least hope your mind will emerge from the gutter and we'll see some of the fiction for which I actually frequent this site?”

· “You're a freakin' chauvinist, Manno. You may be able to fool these other rubes, but not me.”

And the one I'm thinking may be the most prevalent:

· “This is not Star Trek.”

As you might imagine, I beg to differ.

While I agree it's not run-of-the mill Star Trek, and certainly isn't your mommy's Star Trek, I do think it qualifies—at the core. Let me explain why (yes, here comes the apologia)…

…and, moreover, what inspired this story.

I enjoyed Deep Space Nine's run, for the most part; one of the series' most powerful episodes was “In the Pale Moonlight,” wherein Sisko employs some rather questionable methods to manipulate the Romulan Empire into joining the Federation/Klingon Alliance against the Dominion and Cardassians. Great story… great Trek…

…or so I thought when I first watched it.

As I considered the sequence of events, though, I began to reconsider precisely what had occurred… and grew progressively more disturbed by it. It was bad enough that Sisko—our hero, and the man from whose perspective the story had been told—had compromised principles he held dear to accomplish his stated goal of gaining Romulan participation in the war.

Two things made it far worse: One, it worked; and two, there were no legitimately unfortunate consequences… for either him or the Federation.

Now one might make the argument that the protagonist agonized over what he did—that he'll carry it with him for the rest of his life. I can't refute that point; the episode's conclusion took excruciating pains to establish Sisko's anguish at what he'd done (though his fury at Garak’s fatal sabotage of the visiting Senator Vreenak’s shuttle was hilariously hypocritical when compared with the millions of Romulans he would have been condemning to death if his own original ploy had been successful). I remember thinking, “Wow… but they're in the war now, and that's a good thing. The Federation’s desperate, after all.”

But does desperation, however strait and genuine, excuse those actions?

No, it really doesn’t.

And that’s why “In the Pale Moonlight” ultimately fails—not as a story, but as Star Trek. And it fails in a particularly insidious way—that is, while making you think it succeeded.

I'm a theologian (and on occasion, no doubt, a bit holier-than-thou), yet they still managed to momentarily seduce me over to the Dark Side of the… Oops, sorry, mixing my sci-fi metaphors there. Let me try something simpler.

The writers had temporarily succeeded in magnetizing my moral/ethical compass, and I was furious they’d so deceived me.

Now, some might say, “That’s what makes this brilliant Trek. They had you thinking.”

A valid point… as far as it goes.

And that’s not far enough.

“The end justifies the means” has long been one of the great philosophical premises with which man has struggled. In my opinion, Star Trek has always stood firmly in the camp of those who say, “No, it does not… even when things look their darkest, there has to be another way, if you look hard enough, and have faith.” Spock mentions something of this sort to his promising protégé in Star Trek VI… and she utterly fails to comprehend it.

Unlike the young, impressionable and frightened Valeris, though, Sisko, rather than denying this, simply sets it aside… and in his (admittedly successful) attempt to preserve the Federation, betrays much for which it stands.

I know what you're thinking: What the hell does all this have to do with Nature of the Beast?

Well, as you've already learned, Parihn makes a choice partway through the novel to sleep with Jerrell, in an attempt to preserve Aedra's life and restore her freedom… despite the fact that she loves another man and knows this will greatly hurt him, holds in disdain the person with whom she’ll be having sex, and clearly feels that on some level what she's doing is just not right. It's a choice that's, paradoxically, both enormously difficult and tremendously easy for her. She was an enslaved prostitute for the better part of a decade. What's one more night of letting someone fuck you, after all, in the larger scheme of things?

She temporarily loses her faith, in both herself and the people she loves, and makes the morally wrong choice, in this author's opinion. Is her decision reprehensible, on the order of Sisko's? By no means is this so. Is it comprehensible from a certain perspective? Unquestionably. Could one even say that what she did took courage and self-sacrifice? Absolutely. Parihn, I daresay, thought she was opting for the lesser of two evils.

But in the end, she still chose an evil… an evil means to reach what she hoped would be a good end… and paid a price. Perhaps the personal cost is not as steep as it might have been, since the man who loves her understands her motivations, and truly attempts to forgive Parihn what she did. But he, and she, will no doubt continue, at least for a time, to feel the pain of her betrayal at odd moments, for men and women are not perfect in letting go their anger… and though, as Hatshepsut, Donaldson, and even Mantovanni point out, she did nothing wrong technically, it was a betrayal—of her own heart—and she knew it.

The allure—the thrill—of traveling the slippery slope is just that: We feel we can take it so far, and then turn back. Sometimes we even succeed.

But it's still wrong. Our heroine knows it, and we the readers know it (I feel myself a reader of this story, too, for some reason).

If Parihn had succeeded in rescuing Aedra, and then I had written everything to magically work out perfectly as a result of her morally questionable actions, I would have been contributing to the premise that “the ends justify the means”—as the writers, irresponsibly, in my opinion, imply they did, and do, at the conclusion of “In the Pale Moonlight.”

And she’s not the only person who’s made a highly questionable decision in the course of the narrative. Mantovanni decides to threaten thousands or even millions of innocent people to safeguard Parihn’s life; while we’re never quite sure whether or not he’s bluffing (and I left this intentionally vague), there can be no doubt that, even if the woman he loves had been killed by the Orions, he would not have been justified in such retaliatory action. Though it’s clichéd, two wrongs most emphatically do not make a right.

From my admittedly biased perspective (whose perspective isn't biased, however?), the ends don't justify the means; at least, they're not supposed to do so in Star Trek, which is held to a higher standard… or, at least, was until that fateful moment when Benjamin Sisko decided that his vision of what needed to be done should override the principles upon which the UFP was founded. There's no need for a Section 31, when the very paragons of Starfleet are, in their way, at times just as morally bankrupt.

If the Federation itself possessed a literal consciousness, or was personified in some way, I wonder if she would have preferred to be saved in that fashion… or to die bravely in defense of what she believed?

This is a smaller story than “In the Pale Moonlight,” granted. But I submit that, in its way, it's a worthy one… perhaps not better written, or more exciting (I might think so, but those are decisions for the readers and viewers)…

…but it is, in its flawed way, what Star Trek should be—at least, is closer to that ideal than “In the Pale Moonlight” is.

On that, I'll make my stand.

Let the debate begin.

Epilogue