by David Mack
Ra-Havreii shrugged. “Reasonable. Computer, activate holopresence module. Location: Deck One, conference room.” The all-encompassing sphere of outer space was replaced in a gentle, fading transition by a holographic representation of the conference room located behind Titan’s main bridge.
The simulacrum was perfect in every detail, down to the scent of the fabric on the chairs and the scratches that Pazlar’s armature had made in the table’s veneer the last time she had attended a meeting there. Outside its tall windows, warp-distorted stars streaked past.
A subtle change in the environment’s gravity enabled Pazlar and Ra-Havreii to stand on the deck rather than float above it.
“Cute trick,” Pazlar said.
Ra-Havreii chuckled and held up his index finger. “Wait,” he said. “There’s more.” He tapped his combadge. “Ra-Havreii to Commander Vale.”
“Vale here. Go ahead, Commander.”
“Commander, could I ask you to have one of your bridge personnel step into the Deck One conference room for a moment?”
Vale sounded confused. “Anyone in particular?”
“No,” Ra-Havreii said. “Whoever can spare a moment.”
“All right,” Vale said, suspicion coloring her tone. “Ensign Vennoss is on her way.”
“Thank you, Commander. Ra-Havreii out.” He looked at Pazlar and lifted his thick white eyebrows. “This, I expect, will be the fun part.”
A portal that led to a corridor that linked the conference room and the bridge opened with a soft hiss, and Ensign Vennoss, an attractive young Kriosian woman, entered carrying a padd. She stopped short and recoiled in mild surprise from Pazlar.
“Sorry, sir,” Vennoss said. “I was expecting to meet Commander Ra-Havreii.” Then she eyed Pazlar more closely. “Pardon me if this is none of my business, but don’t you normally use a motor-assist armature outside of stellar cartography?”
Pazlar’s mute, slack-jawed stare of surprise was an even richer reward than Ra-Havreii had hoped for. He tapped his combadge again. “Ra-Havreii to Ensign Vennoss.”
Half a second after he’d finished speaking, his call was repeated from the overhead speaker inside the simulacrum. As Vennoss spoke, he heard her reply both “in person” and echoing from his combadge. “Vennoss here. Go ahead, Commander.”
“Lieutenant Commander Pazlar and I are conducting a test of some new holopresence equipment in the stellar cartography lab. Can you bear with us a moment while we make a few adjustments?”
Vennoss gave a single nod. “Yes, sir. My pleasure.”
“Thank you.” He looked from Vennoss to Pazlar and said in a gentle but prodding way, “Go ahead—talk with her.”
It took a second for Pazlar to compose herself, then she straightened her posture to carry herself like a proper officer. “Ensign,” she said, and she stopped, apparently uncertain what to say next. Then she continued, “Have there been any new sensor contacts since your last report?”
“No, sir,” Vennoss said. “I may have detected a Kerr loop in a nearby star cluster, but I’m still crunching the numbers to confirm it before I put it in the log.”
“Ensign,” Ra-Havreii said, pausing as he heard his voice emanate from Vennoss’s combadge. “Is your analysis on that padd you’re carrying?”
The Kriosian blinked. “Yes, sir.”
“Would you let Commander Pazlar look at it a moment?”
“Yes, sir,” Vennoss said, and she walked up to Pazlar and offered her the padd.
Pazlar stared at it for a second before she accepted it from the ensign. She paged through some of the ensign’s facts and figures, and then she handed the padd back to Vennoss. “Thanks, Ensign. I look forward to reading your report.”
“Aye, sir.”
Ra-Havreii was satisfied with the test. “Thank you, Ensign,” he said. “You can return to the bridge now.”
Vennoss nodded, gave a small sigh of relief, and exited the way she had come in. As soon as she was gone, Pazlar turned and beamed at Ra-Havreii. “Did you mean what you said? About this being able to go anywhere on the ship?”
“Indeed, I did.” He strolled closer to her. “It took weeks,” he continued, “but I’m fairly certain the holopresence system is fully integrated in all compartments and on all decks. Your holographic avatar is a completely faithful stand-in for you, and your shipmates’ avatars in here should be able to represent them with near-perfect fidelity.”
Teasing him every so slightly, she asked, “Near-perfect?”
“Well, all but perfect,” he said. “But only to a point.”
Perhaps because his reputation had preceded him once again, she asked, “And what, pray tell, might that point be?”
He was standing very near to her, close enough to be captivated by the delicate fragrance of her perfume. “I would say the simulation loses its value at precisely the point where the real thing would be eminently preferable.”
She seemed quite amused. “That’s a very discreet way of phrasing it.”
“Well, yes,” he said. “Discretion is a virtue, I’m told.” He leaned toward her, a prelude to a kiss—
She pulled away and stepped back. “I’m sorry,” she said, avoiding eye contact with him. “I was just kidding around.” She turned her back. “I hope I didn’t lead you on.”
He inhaled to sigh, then held his breath a moment. “No,” he said, with as much tact and aplomb as he could muster. “I guess I just got carried away. If there was any error to be found here, it was mine, and I apologize.”
“No apology needed,” she said, half turning back toward him. “But thank you, anyway.”
He bowed his head and showed his open palms next to his legs, a polite gesture of contrition and humility. Inside, however, he felt deeply ashamed. Seeing her empowered and happy had made him forget, just for a moment, that her emotions could be just as fragile as her physique.
Many months had passed since Commander Tuvok, while temporarily under the telepathic influence of a spaceborne entity, had assaulted Pazlar in the ship’s main science lab. Not only had he harmed Pazlar physically, breaking some of her bones, he had forced critical information from her memory with a Vulcan mind-meld, a grotesque personal invasion. Since then, she had bravely confronted her fears by working with Tuvok to learn ways of defending herself, in spite of her physical limitations.
But there was no denying that the attack had changed her. She could be warm at times, even jovial—but since the attack she had become more distant, a little bit harder to reach. In a very real sense, she seemed even more isolated than she had before.
Ra-Havreii knew about emotional scars, unforgiven sins, and lingering pain. He still blamed himself for a fatal accident years earlier, in the engine room of Titan’s class-prototype ship, the Luna. Everyone who had been there, and many others who hadn’t, had tried to console him with empty platitudes:
It wasn’t your fault, Xin.
There’s no way you could have known what would happen.
You have to move on.
He knew better. As the designer of the Luna class, it had been his job to know what would happen. It had been his fault.
Some wounds, he had learned, could not be left behind. His past stayed with him, haunted him, reminded him always of his limitations. He saw shades of that same pain in Melora.
Efrosians often attuned themselves to one another’s emotional needs; it was considered a foundation for intimacy, which in turn strengthened social bonds. So it came as no surprise to Ra-Havreii that Pazlar’s profound physical and emotional vulnerabilities had awakened a protective side of his nature. That had, no doubt, been a subconscious factor in his tireless efforts to rebuild the stellar cartography interface and create the holopresence network for her.
He let his gaze linger a moment on her profile. Though he had enjoyed the attention of a wide range of female companions over the years, including a few on Titan, such pleasures had always been fleeting. He sometimes suspected that his serial seduction
s were really little more than feeble distractions from his suppressed melancholy.
Faced with the emptiness of it all, he breathed a quiet sigh and watched Melora out of the corner of his eye.
I should ease up before I make myself fall in love with her. Besides, what would I do if she fell in love with me? A shadow of self-reproach darkened his mood. Don’t be stupid, Xin. You don’t deserve to be that lucky … not in this life or the next.
* * *
Deanna Troi had begun tuning out Dr. Ree’s voice the moment he said, “I’m sorry.”
He was still talking, but she was only half listening to him now, as she sank into a black pit of grief and fury. Not again, she raged inside. I can’t go through this again. Not now.
Will Riker—her Imzadi, her husband, her friend—stood beside her and gripped her left hand in both of his as she sat on the edge of the biobed. She shut her eyes against the cold light of sickbay while Dr. Ree continued delivering bad news.
“I ran the test several times,” he said. “There was no mistake.” He bowed his long, reptilian head and looked at the padd in his clawed, scaly hand. “The genetic abnormalities are irreparable. And I fear they will only become worse.”
It was so unfair. Burning tears welled in Troi’s eyes, and her throat seized shut on a knot of sorrow and anger. A suffocating tightness in her chest made it hard to breathe.
Will, sensing that she was unable to speak for herself, asked the Pahkwa-thanh physician, “Do you know why it happened? Can you tell us if it’ll happen again?”
“Not yet,” said the dinosaur-like doctor. Troi fixed him with a sullen glower. It didn’t seem to faze him. “I need to make a detailed analysis before I can offer a prognosis.”
Troi’s empathic senses felt protective indignation pulsing in waves from her Imzadi before he snapped at Dr. Ree, “Why didn’t you do that the last time, five months ago?”
“Because a first miscarriage in a humanoid normally isn’t cause for long-term concern,” Ree said. “The likelihood of a miscarriage for a woman who has already had one is the same as for a woman who hasn’t. But a second event greatly increases the risk of future complications.” Once again he spoke to Troi instead of to Will. “Betazoid women your age often have successful pregnancies, but your half-human ancestry introduces some hormonal factors that muddy the picture a bit. That’s why I need to run more tests. With your permission.”
Numb, torn between a desire to scream and the impulse to retreat to someplace dark and quiet and simply hide for weeks on end, all Troi could muster in response was a tiny nod of her chin. Then she cast her forlorn gaze at the floor, desperate to be done with this hideous day. The doctor finished entering his notes on the padd, looked up, and said, “Unless you have more questions, we should probably get you prepped.”
Will turned his body in a way that interposed his shoulder between Troi and the doctor. “Prepped? For what?”
“To remove the fetus,” he said.
Troi covered her abdomen with her right arm, and her response was sharp and instantaneous. “Absolutely not.”
A rasp rattled behind Ree’s fangs before he said, “Commander, please—I’m recommending this procedure because it’s in your best interest medically.”
“I don’t agree,” Troi said, sliding forward off the biobed and onto her feet. She inched closer to Will.
Ree sidestepped to block Will and Troi’s path, leaving them cornered between two biobeds. “My dear counselor, forgive me for being blunt, but your fetus will not survive to term. It will die in utero—and unlike your last miscarriage, this one poses a serious risk to your own health, and perhaps your life.”
He had made a logical, reasonable argument, but Troi didn’t care. Her child, however flawed, was bound to her by slender threads of breath and blood, depended upon her for everything from food to antibodies. So tiny, so defenseless, her fragile scion was an innocent vessel, one in which she and Will had invested all their hopes and dreams. She couldn’t bring herself to do what Dr. Ree asked, not even to save herself.
She hardened her resolve. “The answer is no, Doctor.”
“As the chief medical officer, I could insist,” Ree said. To Will, he added, “As I’m sure you well know, Captain.”
Ree’s challenge made Will bristle with anger. “My wife said the answer is no, Doctor. I’d advise you to think twice before you try to force the issue.” He stretched one arm across Troi’s shoulders and nudged her forward toward Ree, who held his ground. Will glared at him. “We’re leaving now, Doctor.”
The hulking Pahkwa-thanh, Troi knew, could easily snap off both their heads with a casual bite of his massive jaws. His frustration and irritation were radiant to Troi’s empathic mind, and even more vibrant than her Imzadi’s fearless resolve. She expected Ree, as a predator by nature, to relish confrontation. Instead, he turned away and plodded toward his office, his mood a leaden shadow of resentful disappointment.
Will guided her out of sickbay. In the corridor he took her hand, and they walked together in mournful silence toward their quarters. As always, he wore a brave face and played the part of the stoic, but his heartbreak was as palpable to her as her own. She sensed a deeper unease in him, one that he refused to express—a profound inner conflict mixed with fear. There had been undertones of this in his emotions in sickbay, as well. Probing his thoughts, she realized he had strongly disagreed with her decision to refuse Dr. Ree’s advice, yet he had backed her choice without hesitation.
As his wife, she was grateful that he had supported her wishes over his own. As a mother, she hated him for being willing to sacrifice their child in her name.
It had been several months since their initial attempt at having a child had ended in tragedy. Her first miscarriage had occurred with no warning, just a surge of pain in the night. Until that moment, they had thought that conception alone would be their greatest hurdle.
They had both been subjected to lengthy, invasive fertility treatments to overcome what Dr. Ree had politely described as “genetic incompatibilities” in their DNA. Several failed attempts at conception had strained her relationship with Will to a degree they’d never endured before, and the hormonal changes she had undergone for the fertility enhancements had weakened her psionic defenses, causing her to project her emotions on others in unexpected and sometimes dangerous ways.
Everything had seemed so much easier when they’d thought that the only things their family-to-be had to fear were “out there,” far away and unnamed. Now the greatest threat to their dreams lay within themselves—a flaw, some monstrous defect that had rendered them unfit for the roles they most desired.
Their second attempt at conceiving a child had been an act of hope, a refusal to succumb to despair. Through all of Troi’s nights of bitter tears and black moods, Will had never faltered, never given up hope that they would persevere. “I have faith in you,” he’d said one night, months earlier. “Faith in us. I have to believe that we’ll get through this. I have to believe that.”
Until tonight, he had.
Something in Will had changed when Dr. Ree had delivered his diagnosis. She had felt it, an icy resignation in his mind. It lasted only a moment, but it had happened: He’d lost hope.
Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t notice that they had been in a turbolift until they stepped out onto the deck where their quarters were located. A few paces into the corridor, she stopped. Will continued for a step until he felt the resistance in her hand, and he turned back, concerned and solicitous. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she lied. “I’m just feeling a need to walk for a while. Maybe in the holodeck.”
He nodded. “All right. Anywhere you want.”
As he started back toward the turbolift, she let go of his hand. “I meant … that I’m feeling a need to walk by myself.”
His face slackened and paled, and he lowered his chin. “I see,” he said in a voice of quiet defeat.
Troi didn’t need empathy t
o know how deeply she had wounded him. All his body language signaled his withdrawal, and his anguish was overwhelming, too intense for her to tune out. She was desperate to comfort him, but her thoughts were awash in her own toxic brew of dark emotions. Twice in less than half a year, their hope of starting a family had turned to ashes, and she didn’t know why. She couldn’t accept it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just … I …”
“I understand,” he said, and she knew it was true, he did. He was her Imzadi, and their emotional bond, normally a comfort, now was an amplifier of their shared grief. It was too much.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. Then she walked away, knowing how badly Will wanted to stop her, and hoping that he wouldn’t. She hated herself for abandoning him, and she both loved him and hated him for letting her go.
She stepped into a turbolift, and the doors closed behind her. “Holodeck One,” she said, and the lift hummed as it accelerated away, circuiting the primary hull.
As the turbolift sped her through the ship, she thought of her older sister, Kestra, who had drowned at the age of seven, shortly after Troi had been born. Their mother, Lwaxana, had caused herself severe psychological trauma by repressing all her memories of Kestra for decades, until the submerged grief all but destroyed her from within.
At the time, Troi had felt sympathy for her mother, even though she had been horrified that Lwaxana could erase her own child from her memory. Now, faced with her own, imminent second miscarriage, Troi no longer felt revulsion at the thought of her mother’s self-inflicted amnesia. She felt envy.
* * *
Captain William Riker crossed from the turbolift to his ready room in quick strides, making only fleeting eye contact with his first officer, Christine Vale, who had command of the bridge during beta shift. He made a brief nod as she got up from the center seat. “As you were,” Riker said, and he kept walking, trying to raise as minor a wake with his passage as possible. As soon as the ready room’s door closed behind him, he slowed his pace and moved in heavy, tired steps to his desk.
Circling behind it to his chair felt like too much effort, so he turned and perched himself on its edge. His head drooped with fatigue. For Deanna’s sake he had maintained a façade of placid control, but his emotions felt like a storm battering the empty shores of his psyche. Depression, anger, guilt, and denial followed one another in crushing waves.