by Ilsa J. Bick
“Amen to that.” Stern smoothed stray hairs back then keyed in for her holomirror to show alternate views: back, front, each side of her head. She twiddled with her ponytail, centering it snugly against the nape of her neck. “Rogue telepaths, right?”
“Or just common criminals. So how do you control a telepath gone sour? You can either kill him, and that doesn’t seem to have been the Hebitian style, or you can exile him somehow, put him on ice, like stasis only telepath-style. Here, they reduced their neural patterns somehow and put them into a containment field.”
“Like a genie in a bottle.”
“Only these genies got out. Probably an accident: one of these rogues figuring out that a person with a certain genetic makeup could act as a receptacle. So breed a select line of those people but make it mystical, like a state religion, and these rogues get their chance, now and again, to go free. Except you’d dilute the stock over time; happens when there’s a large population. And genetics is funny business. Too much inbreeding, you make the stock weak, and too much mixing with the rest of the gene pool and your chances of getting exactly what you want go down.”
“Makes sense.” Stern replaced her brush and then popped open another drawer and began affixing her pips to her uniform collar. “It would explain the need for the mask.”
“Yup. So here’s the kicker and where you have to use your imagination, take a couple leaps of faith here. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s say that these rogues were Hebitian and the Hebitians, as a species, were telepaths. Some were good; some were bad. The Cardassians say they’re descendants of the Hebitians. But Vulcans can’t mind-meld with Cardassians and there are no Cardassian telepaths. None. Zip. Not a one. Okay, your turn.”
“Oh, Mac, that’s a gimme.” Stern turned and ticked off her conclusions on her fingers. “It’s obvious. The Cardassians aren’t descendants of the Hebitians, but they may have evolved parallel to the Hebitians. Only the Hebitians were the stronger, master race. The Cardassians revered the Hebitians, maybe not like gods, but they build up this religion around access to a higher spiritual Oversoul, Overmind, whatever you want to call it. You know those murals they have around Lakarian City?”
“That thing with wings and a Cardassian face, the one with tentacles?”
“That’s it. First of all, that creature hovers above the planet, like a sun god, just like what we saw. Second, those tentacles radiate down to the people on the planet and then through the people into the planet. I think the official interpretation is that this refers to this Overmind, or something, binding the people together, anchoring them to the planet. Only what if that’s a reference to the Hebitians? To something down deep, in the planet, like what we found?”
“Interesting idea.” McCoy pulled thoughtfully at a wattle of flesh beneath his chin. “Can’t prove it, can’t disprove it, but it would answer why the Cardassians look on the Hebitians as gods. Go on.”
“Mac, don’t you get it? Those tentacles, they’re metaphorical references to the Hebitians’ telepathic capabilities. Over time, the Cardassians develop resistance to psi influence. The Hebitians lose control, and then, like all gods, they fall. Except for the Cardassians, it’s a disaster because the planet’s in chaos, and they’re still rebuilding, getting stronger. But here’s the real mystery.” Stern leaned on her knuckles and eyed McCoy through her viewscreen. “Mac, those telepaths on that planet, how did the hell did they get there? Who was smart enough to know how to capture their neural signatures in a magnetic containment field?”
McCoy pooched out his lips. “The Hebitians themselves?”
Stern ducked her head in agreement. “Or somebody equally, if not more advanced. And they had to be a space-faring species, Mac. So who were they?”
“Beats me. Like all mysteries, just opens up more questions, stuff we can argue about over drinks. So.” He clapped his hands together, gave them a good scrub. “When you going to happen back my way?”
“Soon.” Stern straightened, tugged down on her tunic. “Sooner, if you give me a good mystery. You know I love a good mystery.”
“Will do.” Then McCoy pulled his face closer, squinted. “My God, woman, are you wearing lipstick?”
Stern laughed out loud. “Mac, I told you. It’s a party.”
The doors opened to the ship’s arboretum, and Garrett stepped into the soft, sweet scent of roses and Asian lilies. The air of the arboretum was damper than the rest of the ship, and Garrett listened to the splash of water cascading over a tiny rock waterfall to a pool where the green discs of lily pads and Denebian watertrumpets floated. The sound of the water reminded her of Qadir’s riyad, and that made her think of Halak, and she wondered where he might be at the very moment.
Not now. With an effort, she tore her thoughts away from Halak. Later—she checked the time because she’d wanted everyone convened at 1900 on the dot—she had plenty of time to think about Halak later. Right now, she had to find Jase.
That didn’t take long. She wandered down a path that began with the spiny, squat desert wahmlats that studded Vulcan’s arid plateaus and ended in a small grotto of tropicals—bromeliads and orchids—native to Earth.
Jase slouched on a slate stone bench next to a tiny pool stippled with the stalks of musk-scented butterfly wands. He held a drawing pad in one hand, a pencil in another because, as he told his mother, he was a purist. A collection of Matrayan blueglows ducked and weaved over a profusion of wide, splayed petals of hot pink and deep purple.
“Can I sit down?” she asked.
Jase nodded without looking up. Garrett slid onto the stone bench, feeling how cool the rock was beneath her thighs. She cocked her head to study Jase’s drawing: the half-finished portrait of a man. Her heart squeezed. There was no mistaking the high cheekbones, the fall of that raven-colored hair.
She touched a finger to the drawing. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s not done,” said Jase. His voice was thick with unshed tears. “It’s only been two weeks, but I can’t remember his eyes. I try, but the more I try, the more he gets blurry, like I’m looking through fog.”
Garrett wanted to point out that they had pictures; there were archives and records. But she held her tongue. She was always in such a rush to fix things, provide false reassurances that everything would be all right. Sometimes the best thing was to allow space for pain. God knew she’d had her share of grieving before, and after the divorce. But at that last moment, when she’d knelt beside Ven Kaldarren, her grief had crashed through the barrier she thought she’d erected. Grief was still fresh in her heart, with anger at her own stupidity—her own stubbornness—not far behind.
She knew, too, that Jase had lost something infinitely precious: his father. Conceivably—though she couldn’t imagine it—she might come to love again. But Jase would never have another father, and there were experiences Jase had with Ven Kaldarren that Garrett wouldn’t ever be a part of because she simply hadn’t been there.
She ached to brush the boy’s hair from his forehead, but she wasn’t sure she should touch him just yet. In the two years since the divorce, how he’d grown. No longer a little boy but teetering on the brink of adolescence.
Time’s tricky that way. You’ve got your memories, but time flows all around you and you’re always thinking you have so much more time than you really have. Really, all you have, in the end, is time for regret.
That niggling little voice of conscience? Or was it her, accepting herself? Maybe, she conceded, it was both.
Jase traced the angle of his father’s jaw with one gray-smudged finger. “Do you remember what he looks like?”
Garrett inhaled the scent of wet earth and damp leaves. “Sometimes ... no. And then sometimes, like here,” she nodded at the pond, the flowers, the blueglows, “I’ll smell something and then I’ll remember a picnic by Lake Cataria, what I wore, how your father made a joke and I spilled a glass of Potroian punch all over his shirt because I was laughing so hard.” And, so, why do I feel li
ke crying?
“I can’t do that,” said Jase miserably. “I can’t think about him much without remembering what happened and how he looked when those things ...”
Jase’s eyes pooled, but no tears came. “Why? Why didn’t they take me? Why Pahl and Dad? I felt them; I saw them.”
Acting on impulse, Garrett put her arm around her son. She felt him stiffen, and for an insane moment, she thought that he was going to scream at her to get away; that she could never be like his father; that she’d left them both behind for her ship and people she loved better. She almost pulled away.
Stop running. You ran from Ven, and now you’re trying to run from him. You’re so ready to be rejected you’ll do the rejecting first.
She squeezed his shoulder. “I don’t know,” she said. She thought back to the mind-cry she’d heard—Ven, calling—how strong that momentary connection had been. Fading now. Receding into memory.
“All I do know is that, for a brief instant, I heard your dad calling. Up here.” She tapped her left temple. “Inside.”
“Yeah,” said Jase. “Me, too. Only it went both ways. Dad never talked to me that way. Said I needed my privacy. But sometimes he leaked.”
“Leaked. Thoughts?”
“Yeah. Sometimes I could hear him and Nan yelling, only not in words. You know? The air got,” he cupped his hands, “heavy. So I figured out how to make my head go gray. Like the way the sky looks just before it rains.”
An empath ... or something more. Garrett felt an electric thrill tingle through her limbs. She wasn’t sure if it was from apprehension or excitement, and then decided it was a little of both. She’d always known Jase might inherit some of his father’s abilities. But what Jase described was so eerily close to telepathy, she wondered if she should have Stern, or maybe Tyvan, spend some time with Jase, maybe test him.
No. She reined in her natural desire to try to find an answer, close a loop. She had to let this go for now. The important thing now was to be here for her son, to be with him, and to let him talk about his father, and what would happen next.
“What’s going to happen next?” asked Jase, suddenly.
“What?” Garrett felt the way she had when her mother caught her climbing on the roof when Garrett was a little girl (and wasn’t that a whole other story). “Well, I’ve talked to your Nan on Betazed. We all think it would be better for you to live there.”
Jase looked solemn. “Does it matter what I think?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’d like to stay here. I know I can’t,” he added quickly, “but I’d like to. I love you, Mom.”
Garrett put both arms around her son. No resistance this time. She felt the tension melt from his limbs as if he were flowing into her and becoming one. It was the way she remembered he’d been as a baby: a little ball of fury until she’d taken him in her arms and soothed him back to sleep.
“Oh, Mom.” He pressed his hot face against her neck and she felt the wet of his tears on her skin. “Mom, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m ...”
“No, quiet,” she whispered, tears burning on her cheeks. “It’s all right; it’s all right for you to have been angry. I understand. I love you, Jase. I’ll always love you. And who knows? Maybe, someday, I’ll be able to take you with me, and we’ll live together on a starship and travel to places so far away that the light of where we’ve been won’t have time to catch up.”
She hugged him close. “Someday,” she said, and believed it.
* * *
In the turbolift, Castillo glanced at his chronometer, saw the time, and knew that Garrett was going to eat him for breakfast. He was going to be so late it wasn’t even funny. (Not that Castillo understood the origin of that expression. Where was the humor in being late? Maybe Glemoor could explain it.) It wasn’t his fault, either: the people over at transfer, the ones from Starfleet Command, they were the ones insisting on forms being voice-printed three times over. Chain of custody, they called it. Figured. The first time the captain wanted Castillo at an official function—had specifically requested he show up, in dress uniform, on time—and here he was going to be late, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Other than a few pleasantries, they’d exchanged not two paragraphs on the ride over in the shuttlecraft. And now the turbolift seemed to be taking forever. Castillo fidgeted, staring in that blank, abstracted way at the flashing indicators just above the doors that he always did when riding in a turbolift with a complete stranger. Only he wasn’t with a stranger. They simply didn’t know what to say to one another.
Then Halak spoke. “Any idea why they wanted the inquiry on Starbase 12 rather than the Enterprise?”
Careful. He’d been briefed on what to say. Castillo spoke to the indicator lights. “They don’t tell me why they do anything.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” A pause. “But you’ll be there.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re in dress. So I figured you were going to sit in. Observe?”
Castillo hiked one shoulder. “Maybe.” Then because he couldn’t stand the feeling he was having—the way he heard Tyvan’s voice in his head, telling him he couldn’t keep running from himself forever and would have to have more courage than he thought he possessed—Castillo said, “Stop.”
The turbolift jerked to a halt.
Halak turned, eyebrows raised. “Ensign? Is there something wrong?”
“No,” said Castillo. He licked his lips. Tyvan’s voice again: Getting started will be the hard part. “Yes.”
He filled his lungs, blew out. “Commander, I have to tell you something.”
“About what?”
Castillo was already regretting this (go away, Tyran, just go away!), but he pushed on. “About what happened with Ani. Everything that happened, it was my fault.”
Halak’s brow creased. “Your fault. How?”
“I ... well, you know, we were close. Before you came.” When Halak just nodded, he continued, “And then you showed up and I could tell that Ani, she’d fallen hard. I was jealous, but I got over that. At least, I thought I had. People change their minds all the time, and ...”
Castillo looked away for a moment, dreading what he knew he had to say. Sucked in a breath and continued. “Anyway, I would watch the two of you, and she looked so damned happy, I couldn’t stand it. I thought all kinds of things. Crazy stuff now that I look back on it, but pretty awful stuff.”
“I can imagine.” Halak’s voice was quiet. “You’re not the only one who’s ever been jealous.”
“Yeah, well, I thought I’d gotten past that. And then Ani came to talk to me. This was about a week before she died. We were still close after she took up with you, and we’d talk. We were friends.” Castillo wondered if he sounded too defensive then thought to hell with it.
“I know that. I never held it against you.” Halak paused. “What did she say?”
“She said she was having second thoughts. I wasn’t sure what about; she’d gone to see Stern. She wouldn’t tell me what Stern said, but whatever it was, she was pretty upset.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter anymore, Ensign. Ani’s dead, and ... we’ll just never know. Dr. Stern won’t tell us, and it’s more than likely that, after the inquiry today ...”
Halak broke off, and Castillo thought he’d just let this pass, but Halak squared his shoulders and said, “After the inquiry today, I doubt very much that I’ll ever serve with Dr. Stern, or anyone else from the Enterprise, ever again.”
Castillo knew something about that but judged that now was not the time. He had to finish this.
“Ani talked about wanting to break it oft” with you.” Castillo closed his eyes, remembering the surge of elation he’d felt, the sheer joy that maybe Anisar Batra might be his after all. “But then you took off, and she was beside herself. Whatever was bothering her, she didn’t want to wait until the two of you got to Betazed.”
“All right,” said Halak, puzzled. “But I still don’t
understand ...”
“I told her where you’d gone,” Castillo blurted. “I told her that you were on your way to Farius Prime.”
Halak was stunned. “You? But how did you know?”
This was the hard part, Castillo knew. Best just to admit it and go on. What had Tyvan said? He can’t hate you anymore than you loathe yourself. “I was on the bridge when Bulast patched that call through to you. I used my bridge access code to break into his communications archives and pull up the message. Then I gave the information to Ani. If I hadn’t, she wouldn’t have gone, and she’d still be alive.”
For a moment, Halak said nothing. Then he let out a very soft breath, almost a sigh. “Yes, that’s true, isn’t it? I guess it also means that I’d be dead instead.”
“Sir?”
“There’d have been no one there to save my life, twice over. Ensign, why did you do it?” Halak’s voice trembled, and Castillo thought that although the commander appeared calm, he probably wasn’t.
I sure wouldn’t be; I’d be aching to take a swing.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Castillo heard his shame and pushed on. “I wanted her to break it off with you, and I was willing to do just about anything to speed that along. So I told her, and now she’s dead, and that wasn’t supposed to happen.” Castillo closed his eyes. Had to steel himself before he could look Halak in the eye again. “There was a time when I wanted you dead, Commander. I didn’t care how—a shuttle accident, a transporter failure. Anything. So when everyone blamed you for Ani’s death, I did, too. I was happy to. And when they took you away, part of me was glad because I wanted revenge, and part of me was ashamed that I was glad because the only revenge I ended up taking was on myself, really. And on Ani: She was a victim, too. I know now that I was wrong, not just because of everything that’s happened since but because I spent a lot of time thinking about how I’d let my jealousy turn me into the type of man who didn’t deserve the love of a woman like Ani.”
There. Castillo stopped talking, stood his ground, and waited. He’d done it. He didn’t feel good exactly. Relieved just a little. Sick with shame, too. That would take time to go away, Tyvan had said. The important thing was that Castillo had admitted his culpability to a man he’d hated but didn’t any longer because Castillo understood that his hatred had merely been the mirror image of his hurt and anger. When he’d gone to see Tyvan, he’d known the doctor wouldn’t turn him in—couldn’t because Castillo had seen him in a professional capacity, patient to doctor. But now he’d revealed his secret to someone who could take action, and very likely would.