“Mestof’s men ambushed ours,” Balim began his unemotional recitation. “The attack roused Lia. She left her bed with the intention of invoking a protection shield. She couldn’t control her powers and instead set things afire.”
“Have the healers seen her?”
Balim indicated that they had.
The Doctor studied Lia’s vitals. Without proper equipment, he couldn’t pronounce a certain diagnosis, though his medical instincts told him she was gravely ill. He searched the tent for any medical accoutrements that he might use to help Lia. “Can you help her?” he said finally.
“I’m afraid I might do more damage if I try,” Balim said, smoothing her hair. “Her condition is grave. You’re her only hope.”
“I certainly don’t have the tools I need to properly help her,” the Doctor said. He sorted through a supply chest, setting aside jars of dried herbs, animal parts, and oils to be used in preparing medicine. It was only because of Kes that he had any hint of Ocampan healing in the first place. Being expected to provide expert medical care without proper equipment frustrated him endlessly. He was a doctor, not a replicator! The Doctor unburied a salve he believed would help her pain. He massaged the sweet-smelling ointment into the nerve endings at the base of her skull and into her filth-covered arms and hands. The ointment slowly took effect; Lia breathed easier, her body became slack, though her skin color remained waxen and pale.
Unlacing her torn tunic, the Doctor discovered mottled bruises and weeping blisters covering several broken ribs and her abdomen where she’d been struck by a burning tree limb. Her belly, swollen and hard, indicated internal bleeding. The Doctor touched her forehead, checked her pulse, and determined she ran a fever.
Balim looked at him questioningly.
The Doctor shook his head, offering him little hope. Closing his eyes, Balim rested his head on the edge of her cot, pressing her hand against his cheek.
Shadows lengthened. Outside, the soldiers sang their comrades to the DeadLands. The Doctor ground a rodent’s skull into fine powder with a mortar and pestle, then stirred it into a wooden pot along with some Ocampan rosemary and antiseptic oil. He soaked a length of clean, white wool in the mixture. Pushing up her tunic beneath her breasts, he covered the burns on her abdomen with the poultice. Lacking the surgical instruments for repairing her insides, he could only make her comfortable.
Lia coughed, cried out from the pain caused by her lungs pressing into her broken ribs.
Sitting straight up, Balim watched her intently, holding her hand to his chest. The Doctor hovered over his shoulder.
“Balim? Ced?” Lia’s hacking cough returned and she winced with each breath. “Come closer. I…can barely find…my voice.” When they had assumed their places crouched down on opposite sides of her cot, she said, her voice raspy, “I see it in your faces. I’m dying, aren’t I?”
The Doctor and Balim exchanged sorrowful looks. Balim nodded to the Doctor, who, squeezing Lia’s hand, said, “Yes.”
She gasped, startled, and tears started down her face. “I knew this was possible…I didn’t expect it so soon.”
Sitting on the edge of the cot, Balim eased her head into his lap. He untangled her hair with his fingers, brushed her tears from her cheeks with his thumb.
“Is there—is there any way?” she pleaded. “I—I—I can’t fail my people.”
Ever since the moment he saw the flaming trees from the outlook, the Doctor had been contemplating what, if anything, could be done to salvage something from the life that was General Lia. He had ruminated over the possibilities every step down the switchback track. Somewhere between the bluff and her tent he realized that nothing in his database could help her. The situation required powers beyond anything he had. More than ever, he wished for the expansive treatment options available to an emergency medical hologram. Lia would suffer because of his limitations.
“I have an idea,” Balim said, meeting the Doctor’s eyes.
The Doctor sensed without having to be told that whatever Balim proposed would be risky. He steeled himself for the worst.
Balim took a deep breath. “We could create a child together, a child with…the best in each of us. In time, the child could resume fighting for our people.”
Rocking back onto his heels, the Doctor dropped his hands to his lap, stunned.
Lia, through her pain, protested that such a plan was impossible, her injuries aside, she would not live long enough to carry a child to term.
If this were a normal circumstance, the Doctor would have to agree. With a Nacene involved, however, he didn’t know what was impossible. Over Lia’s body, he frowned at Balim, reprimanding him with a glare.
Balim accepted the chastisement with a nod, linked Lia’s hand with his own, and raised it to his lips. “Meshanna I am…not what I appear to be. I have…powers. Abilities beyond what even you are capable of. With my help, your body would be a momentary vessel.”
“How is such a thing possible?” Lia said.
“My life force would enter you and create a body for our child,” Balim said simply.
“But you—you—”
“As you know me, I would cease to be.”
“Oh please, love,” Lia said. “You cannot do this.” As she pushed up from her cot, her body shuddered as another spate of coughing began. Stubbornly, she placed her hands on either side of Balim’s face and forced him to look at her. “No. I will not let you give your life this way.” She coughed again. This time, blood droplets sprayed from her mouth and stained her chapped skin. Balim held her close.
“You’ll have no choices if you keep this up,” the Doctor said. “Agitation will hasten your deterioration.” Among the medicines, the Doctor found what he believed to be a sedative and administered it. She calmed, her eyes fluttered closed. Balim laid her back down. Once the Doctor was assured that she rested peacefully, he turned to Balim. “Is it possible?”
“From conception to birth would be…almost no time. The fusion of Ocampa and Nacene would produce a…transcendant child, one not bound by the limitations of either species.”
“Because his or her body would be born in this dimension, not Exosia,” the Doctor surmised. “Such a one could have the power to defy the Exiles…”
“And Vivia, if necessary,” Balim said, voicing the Doctor’s unspoken thought. A sadness filled his eyes. “Ocampa is lost to this generation. There is a time in the future when my offspring would have the opportunity to help it be reborn.”
The Doctor sighed deeply. “Lose the battle, win the war.”
Balim said nothing.
“You must consider that Lia isn’t physically capable of carrying such a powerful life force within her for any length of time.”
Balim turned to face him, appearing to study his face intently. “You’re quite right about that. But I sense that there is one within my reach who may be strong enough. One who achieved the Second Life. I see her clearly. She is never far from the surface of your mind.”
The Doctor’s eyes widened. He suspected he understood what Balim was proposing, and the idea simply left him speechless.
“I know how much you want to go back to your people—your ship,” Balim said. “I promise you, if you help us, you will return.”
The Doctor opened his mouth, prepared to proffer a thousand reasons why this was the worst idea he’d heard since Kathryn Janeway decided to adopt a Borg, but again no sound emerged.
What happened next defied all rules of time and space that the Doctor understood. One moment, he was standing beside the crude medicinals, talking to Balim; the next he was flat on his back, shielding his eyes from a light that nearly burned his retinas. And then, as quickly as it had come, the light faded away.
As the Doctor’s eyes readjusted, Balim offered him a hand up. “Prepare her. I have a mission of my own I must fulfill before my rebirth.” He stepped through the tent flap and vanished into the darkness.
The Doctor watched him leave, and then return
ed his attention to Lia. He felt a touch on his shoulder and stood up straight, waiting, afraid to believe. The crashing throb of his pulse filled his ears; his knees weakened beneath him.
“Doctor? Is that you?”
He closed his eyes; her voice played like music in his mind. Swallowing hard, he wet his lips with his tongue and cleared his throat. He dared a glance over his shoulder.
She glowed and shimmered, her glorious image rippling like wind over water, and yet there was no question in his mind who she was, or that she perceived his identity through the façade of his Ocampan body. He smiled at her, and in the same instant, Kes smiled back.
Chapter 8
Tom Paris was not a man who fell for hyperbole. Perhaps his reluctance to rate the places he went or the people he encountered stemmed from a lifetime of discovering that elsewhere in the universe something or someone was always bigger, better, louder, faster, and so forth. There was also the distinct possibility that Tom was too jaded to be easily impressed. Under his present circumstances, he made an exception to his rule. Standing outside the multistory entryway to Fortis Casino, Tom decided that without question, this was the most over-the-top gaudy spectacle he’d ever seen. By comparison, Ferengi had modest taste. Whoever built this place must have emptied out several systems’ worth of latinum or gold for the flooring and figured out how to power a star’s volume of neon lighting to decorate the exterior. Tom wondered seriously if it was possible to sunburn his eyes if he stared at the ribbons and cascading fountains of lights. And thinking about fountains, whatever phosphorescent liquid was erupting out of the center of the plaza had more in common with a geyser—hell, with Victoria Falls—than with a fountain. Tom observed many visitors, hand-in-hand, threading in and out of the glowing streams, frolicking with abandon. He turned to Harry and q to discern their reactions. q had her nose buried in her wrist bag, apparently searching for a compact; Harry was watching q, completely oblivious of the spectacle about him, though this time, Tom granted, there was something to look at—or rather, little to look at.
Mid-finger-snap, q had shed her severe black school clothes and traded them for a skimpy outfit worthy of a dabo girl. Both the strapless bra top held together with chains of glowing lights and her midthigh mini with slits up to her hips appeared to be woven out of a gem-encrusted, fine metallic mail. A matching cap fitted tightly against her skull. q could strut her stuff as a dancing girl on Risa or a table attendant at the finest resorts on Terisis V.
“Tempting?” q powdered her nose, and winked at Tom.
Tom didn’t hesitate. “Nope.”
“Your loss.” She grabbed Harry by the arm and walked faster than any woman in eight-centimeter heels should walk across the plaza toward the line forming before a pair of bouncers—dragons to Tom’s eye. The three of them joined the queue, waiting their turn for admission.
Standing around, Tom had more of an opportunity to study their surroundings. He believed that q wanted to help Kol, but he also knew that Q tended to put self-interest first. Should they need an exit strategy, he wanted to be prepared. Of course, Fortis might not even exist in Tom’s universe, so he figured he might as well toss the rule book out from the get-go.
From his vantage point on the entry plaza, the casino reminded him of the orientation exercises in his Introduction to Engineering class. His professor, Sanjin Nu, took them onto a holodeck to study basic starship engineering components. All but the ship’s innards were rendered transparent by the program. The class would walk along a deck and be able to see the ship in operation all around. In the parlance of the 1950s comic-book adventures Tom liked so well: it was like having X-ray vision. Now, staring through a seemingly endless number of crystal walls, he felt like he was back on the holodeck watching all the intricate workings of a complex machine flashing and moving. B’Elanna would love this place, he thought.
They reached their turn in line. q raised her palm to one of the dragon-bouncers, who scanned it with a phaserlike device. When the dragon raised a suspicious eye to Tom and Harry, q said, “They attend me. Slaves, if you must know. Nothing in the rules forbids them coming with me.”
The dragon rumbled, emitting puffs of smoke, then waved the trio into the lobby.
Tom noted that Harry didn’t appear to be too concerned about the prospect of being q’s slave.
“What’s the plan from here?” Tom asked. They followed q over to a display board that had tens of thousands of items listed on it in various languages and colors with a series of numbers after the written item. The numbers changed every second—increasing or decreasing.
“We need credits. Lots of them if we’re going to get a seat in the game Kol’s playing in. I just need to find out where the action is…” she said, systematically scanning the board.
Tom surmised that the numbers must indicate house wins and losses. q would want to find a game where her odds of winning were best.
“Why don’t we just ask Q for a loan?” Harry asked.
Raising an eyebrow, q glanced at Harry. “Because the big lug went and got banned from Fortis not long ago. He’ll say it was because he was too skilled a player. Management says it’s because he cheats. Badly. He shows up here and he’ll be in Continuum lockup from now until the next Big Bang.” She squatted down and resumed studying the list, paused at an unintelligible line blinking green, and clasped her hands together, grinning. “Follow me,” she said, making her way toward a kiosk.
A yellow Lazi (Tom recognized the type of alien from the node race) reached through the kiosk window, took q’s hand, and scanned her palm the way the dragon had done. A console behind the Lazi produced a platinum-colored band with a square, green stone in the center; the yellow alien slid the band over q’s index finger.
After they left the kiosk, Tom asked q what the band was for. She explained that the band worked as an identification device that would allow her to redeem or borrow credits and would also keep track of what games she entered. “It also registers whenever I use my Q abilities. If the monitors think I’m cheating, they’ll impose deterrents to keep me in line.”
“Such as?” Harry asked.
“Being spaced to the ninth dimension.”
Tom and Harry exchanged quizzical glances.
“Having never been there, you don’t realize what an unpleasant experience it is, but trust me: You don’t want to be spaced to the ninth dimension for any length of time.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Tom said
The trio stepped onto an interfloor conveyor beside a group of lavender-colored spherical aliens covered by sea-urchin-like spikes. From what Tom could tell, there had to be at least fifty different conveyors leading to different areas and climbing through the atrium that extended as high as his eye could see. Tom looked down, through the clump of tropical foliage that grew up the center of the building, and watched level after level of entertainment pass by. He noticed a marquee announcing the Tesseract Ballet Troupe in a zero-g performance of Seductive Geometry as well as the band Motley Q playing their pandimensional hit single, “Woe Is Me (Omnipotence Isn’t What It’s Cracked Up to Be).” Based on the length of the line, Championship Gladitorial Calculus seemed to be a major attraction.
“There’s a game of Zero-One going on the thirteenth level. If the action is hot, I should be able to increase our stake pretty quickly,” q said. “Once I have enough credit, I can buy my way into the higher-level games and find Kol. He won’t be playing anywhere beneath the fiftieth floor.”
Noting her use of the singular pronoun, Tom said, “What are we supposed to do while you’re gambling?”
“Look pretty?” q said dryly.
Tom laughed. “No, seriously.”
“For the time being, just stay alert. We’re taking Pem’s word for it that Kol’s here,” q said, walking off the conveyor at what appeared to be a gaming floor. “It wouldn’t be the first time that overgrown tree branch has lied to avoid a confrontation with the Continuum.” She reached into her wri
st bag, removed two simple, silver bracelets, and slapped one onto Tom’s wrist and then the other onto Harry’s; they locked automatically. “Don’t take these off,” she said, starting down a splashy blue and gold carpet at deadly speed, her stiletto heels never wobbling. “If anyone stops you, these bracelets are encoded to identify you as belonging to me. You’ll be less likely to be taken into custody that way.”
“Less likely?” Harry asked, chasing alongside her.
“They don’t like Dirts around here. You might be cute,” q said, tracing Harry’s cheek with her thumb, “but that doesn’t negate a social order that’s existed since the dimensions collapsed.”
“Is it safe for us to talk to anyone?” Tom asked.
An expression vaguely reminiscent of appreciation crossed her face. “The casino help might be useful. Most of the staff take their breaks in that lounge over there,” she said, pointing toward a loose conglomeration of mostly unoccupied tables arranged around an empty platform with a scarlet velvet curtain draping the wall behind the platform. A fur-covered worker wearing a—to Tom’s eye, tacky—red vest stood behind the bar stacking glasses into a pyramid. “You’re beneath most of the help, but a lot of the creatures who work here would like nothing better than to get back at the Pandimensional Guild. They’ll talk to you if they think they can get someone spaced.”
“Ninth dimension. Gotcha,” Tom said.
Harry placed his hand protectively on the small of q’s back. “We should meet you where…?”
Her eyes flashed with amusement at his gesture. “Your bracelets will buzz if I need you. I won’t.” q paused in front of an arched doorway. “My game’s here.”
“Good luck,” Tom said. He grabbed Harry’s shoulder and steered him in the direction of the lounge.
q called after them, “Luck has nothing to do with it. Being a Q does.” She flashed her identification to the dragon-bouncer and vanished through the doorway.
String Theory, Book 3: Evolution Page 24