by S. D. Perry
Killed her, killed her and I don’t deserve to be glad about anything, not anything at all—
Russell sat in front of him, his wide smile fading.
“What’s wrong, Mr. Underwood? Or . . . may I call you Eli? You can call me Benny.”
Eli nodded. “I’m . . . Nothing is wrong.”—took her away from her daughter, only woman I ever loved, because I’m mad, evil, and crazy, I don’t deserve—
Benny’s dark eyes were watchful. “I see. That makes you something of an exception around here.”
“Oh?” Eli wasn’t interested, but didn’t want to be rude. He clamped down on the inner litany, forcing himself to pay attention.
“That’s right. Everyone who stays here, everyone who works here . . . I don’t know if I’d say there was anything wrong with any of them, but we all have our crosses to bear.” Benny leaned forward, lowering his voice slightly, his gaze intent on Eli’s. “Choices we made that we wish had turned out differently. Bad memories. Bad dreams.”
Eli stared at him, wondering for an instant if somehow, he knew about Ruri, but Benny sat back again, smiling.
“But some of us just want to learn about ourselves, and others,” he said. “Some of us . . . we need to learn. To better ourselves.”
Eli’s throat felt dry. “But . . . aren’t you here because . . . I mean, we’re all here for some crime or another . . .”
Benny’s smile didn’t waver. “That’s one way of looking at it, Eli. Is that why you’re here?”
“I . . . Yes,” Eli said, feeling a deep urge to confess, to tell this man everything, and understanding at the same time that he didn’t deserve to unburden himself, didn’t deserve to ask for the comfort of such release. Benny only watched, his expression a study of patience and calm.
“I’m here . . . because I deserve to be here,” Eli said finally.
This time, Benny’s smile got even wider. He reached forward and patted Eli’s knee, his eyes sparkling.
“Then this must be where you belong,” he said lightly. “Let me tell you about the schedule around here. Did Sue Lynn tell you we’re a ‘progressive’ group?”
Eli nodded, his thoughts distant as Benny described art time, and mealtime, and talk time, where the men and women slept, how to get cigarettes and extra food. Outside, the rain continued to fall.
“ . . . this must be where you belong,” he thought, marveling at how Benny had made it sound, how casual, as though Eli had chosen to think of his sentence as proper . . . implying that there was any other choice. He’d killed his wife in cold blood, in a moment of madness he couldn’t justify; what was there to choose? If Benny noticed that Eli wasn’t paying full attention, he didn’t comment . . . throughout the rest of the morning, he only talked about little things, smiling and warm as he related anecdotes about the other inmates and staff and about himself. It turned out they both loved baseball, and both had been in the military; Benny had been a Navy man in the Pacific theater, ’42, and had some good stories about the men on his ship . . . and though he’d obviously seen plenty, he didn’t relate any combat tales, which was something of a relief. Eli had seen enough of it himself. Benny’s pleasant, unguarded manner was entirely engaging, comforting in its completeness; it was as though he had the ability to draw a man outside himself, to make him see things with a different point of view, a perspective somehow more forgiving than one’s own. Eli wasn’t sure what to make of him. At lunch, when Benny went to sit with another of the inmates for a time, the dark-haired woman with the ancient eyes, Eli was almost relieved to be back with his own familiar thoughts, bleak as most of them were. He watched as Benny took the girl’s hand, talking with her in a low, calm voice, smiling frequently at her . . . and wondered at how such a man had come to be in an asylum for the criminally insane. And wondered, too, why he already felt that he and Benny were going to be friends.
16
JULIAN FINISHED HIS BRIEFING AND WAITED FOR QUESTIONS, RUNNING over his report for any holes he might have left open, any nuances he might have failed to imply. Those gathered—Kira, Ezri, General Cyl, Sam Bowers, Ro Laren, Nog, and Shar—were still digesting what he’d said, he could see it in their faces. They stood in security’s well-shielded cell area, along with Hiziki Gard, still in custody; Gard, too, was silent for the moment, his eyes narrowed in thought. Taulin Cyl had apparently requested that Gard be kept in the loop, and it seemed that Kira had acquiesced. Julian couldn’t help wondering if avoiding the guarded wardroom might also be a reason for her decision to meet at the security offices; there were certainly any number of Starfleet or Cardassian personnel on board who might question an unscheduled officer’s briefing. Julian noted Admiral Akaar’s conspicuous absence, but didn’t pursue it. He had other things on his mind.
Julian was exhilarated by what he’d discovered, but subdued, too, by his inability to save the queen’s host. Tigart Hedda, the carrier, was dead. Figuratively speaking, she’d been dead before security had brought her to the lab, but that hadn’t made Julian’s job any less distressing, his efforts any less resolute. He’d been given the go-ahead to transport the parasite from Hedda’s brain stem immediately, of course, but the operation had hastened the middle-aged Bajoran’s inevitable demise, as he’d suspected it would, as precedent had implied. In addition to the slightly larger female parasite that had rooted itself at the base of Hedda’s brain, there had been twenty-seven “soldier” parasites at varying stages of growth inside of her; the internal injuries had been severe. It was a wonder that she’d remained functional as long as she had, really, yet he still felt the loss as a personal failure. His ego, he knew, vanity, arrogance—they all applied, but he had still hoped to save her. She’d had no husband or children, but had left behind a sister, a cleric on Bajor to whom she’d been close.
“So they communicate telepathically with one another,” Kira said, finally breaking the silence.
“The queen does,” Julian said. “The females are higher functioning, and presumably make the decisions for the colony or colonies as a whole. There’s no evidence to suggest that the soldiers are capable of it. It appears that a female has limited pheremonal contact with the ‘soldier’ parasites, one that allows her to send simple messages—return to a collective, perhaps, or be alert to danger—but to communicate with other females at a distance, they seem to use a kind of mental imaging. Not thought so much as picture, I believe.”
“More Klabnian than Betazoid,” Shar interjected, and Julian nodded. A number of lower-order life forms on Klabnia, a somewhat backwater Alpha swamp planet, employed such a type of telepathy; Julian had looked it up, while studying the female parasite.
Shar was also the first to grasp the obvious implications of the gross anatomy rundown. The specialized haploid cells necessary for sexual reproduction were absent. “And if neither the female nor the male have reproductive organs . . .”
Julian nodded. “The female parasites are born gestational, with a finite number of offspring already implanted. Each female is fully capable of setting up a colony on her own, and as the soldier parasites lack the transmitters that would suggest dominant or even independent behavior, the female ‘leader’ for each grouping probably communicates with other females. There’s no telling what their range is.”
“So . . . what produces the females?” Kira asked.
Julian shook his head. “Nothing we’ve seen so far,” he said. “And likely not on the station; if the hive or colony structure is consistent with other parasitic species we’ve encountered, whatever it is would be capable of a mass spawning, suggesting a being much larger in size. Perhaps something on Bajor. That would explain Shakaar’s transmissions.”
“Based on the Enterprise’s reports, if we kill this female, the soldier parasites it commands will die, is that right?” Ro asked.
“The data suggests that the soldiers would exit their respective carrier bodies before they expire,” Julian said. “But yes, the offspring are somehow dependent on the continued life
of the mother, possibly through the telepathic link.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Ro asked, looking at Kira.
“If we kill the female, any other females in the vicinity will know it,” Julian said. “I don’t know how much information would be passed along, but it could be a serious security risk.”
“The risk is to the people carrying those things around,” Ro said, but didn’t push it any further. Her point was made.
“More queens . . .” Kira murmured. She looked up. “Is there a way to communicate with her?”
“I don’t—Not without a host body,” Julian said slowly. “And introducing the female to another host is out of the question. Her ability to fully integrate her chemistry to a humanoid’s CNS is fast and practically irreversible.”
“All humanoids?” Cyl asked.
Julian didn’t hesitate. “I believe so.”
“But a being adapted to joining,” Cyl said, looking to Gard, who looked at Ezri. She turned her wide blue gaze to Julian, searching his own for the truth.
Don’t. He could feel all of them looking, and though he’d thought to lie if it had come up, had planned to, he found that he couldn’t. Not with Ezri watching him, demanding his honesty by her own. “If it tried to bond with a symbiont rather than a Trill host, there might be a way. I could run a benzocyatic depletion, lower the isoboramine levels . . . but I can’t recommend it. It would be extremely dangerous, to the host as well as the symbiont.”
Cyl was nodding as though he hadn’t heard the warning. “You could use a deFeguo spark line to protect the symbiont, surround it with an electrical pulse network.”
“That should keep her from settling in,” Ezri said.
Kira actually seemed to be considering it. “We have to communicate with it, find out what it wants. At this point, it’s all we’ve got.”
Ezri’s expression made Julian try again. “Again, there’s the security factor to consider,” he said. “Once she’s conscious, she’ll be able to communicate her capture to the others.”
Kira looked at Shar. “Could we shield against it?”
“Uncertain,” Shar said. “Most telepathies can be inhibited, but the materials and circumstances necessary to do so vary widely. It’s possible that if I were to study Dr. Bashir’s data, I may be able to determine the conditions necessary to block the queen’s telepathic signals outright.”
“Nog?” Kira asked.
Nog was nodding, looking around the crowded cell room. “If Shar comes up with the specs, I can pull off the tech, no problem. We could even do it here.”
“I’ll do it,” Ezri said quickly, and Julian’s heart skipped a beat. It was like a nightmare, what he’d dreaded most since hearing what had happened to Audrid’s husband, to the Vod symbiont.
“No,” he said, more forcefully than he’d intended. “It’s . . . There are other options.”
Ezri stared at him. “Like what?”
Julian grasped for something, for anything. “Perhaps we should kill it, as Ro suggested. The station would be cleared, at least, we’d have a safe base from which to continue our defense.”
It was weak reasoning, and he didn’t try to justify it any further. Kira was right, they all knew it; if such a covert infiltration could even be called a war, the parasites were winning it. Ezri stepped closer to him, her face filled with an understanding that made him angry, that made him feel entirely helpless.
Cyl turned to Kira, his face set in grim lines. “Colonel, I volunteer for implantation. In fact, I insist on it.”
At Ezri’s rising frown, Cyl shook his head, his tone insistent. “I’ve spent my life preparing for this, Dax. Don’t think you can step in and take it away, just like that.”
There was a beat of silence, the others in the room shifting uncomfortably. Julian didn’t want anyone to be implanted, he didn’t think it was safe, but he also couldn’t help hoping that if it had to happen, Kira would agree to Cyl’s demand over Ezri’s. The thought made him feel ill.
For the first time since the briefing had begun, Gard spoke. His voice was low, but it carried. “I’ve spent all of my lives preparing for this. It’s what I do. If she’s going anywhere, I’m taking her.” He looked at Kira. “It’s the least I can do.”
Kira was still hesitating. Seeing that she hadn’t quite decided to go forward, Gard added a final push.
“How long do you think it will take for the soldiers to realize that their mother isn’t around anymore?” he asked. “The lockdown is over, Colonel. Don’t waste what little time you have left.”
Kira nodded once, sharply. “All right,” she said, turning to Julian. “Do what you need to do. Nog, Shar, get the room ready. Ro, I want security standing by . . . . Dax, contact ops, make sure Nguyen fields any incoming calls from the admiral. Have him say that I’ll . . . that I’ll get back to him ASAP.”
Ezri and Cyl had moved to Gard’s cell, were talking to him about the implantation. As Julian turned to leave, Ezri shot him a look, one that suggested they’d be talking later about his attempt to dissuade her, but he didn’t care. What mattered was that he wouldn’t have to put her in harm’s way.
We’re not going to be able to work together for much longer, he thought, and buried it before it could go any further, determined not to muck things up between them, aware that it was already too late. He loved her, and that had changed everything.
* * *
For the fourth time in a week, Benny and Eli had their lunch together, and stayed in the dining hall after the others had wandered away, the two of them alone at the end of one of the long tables. A janitor walked by pushing a mop and bucket, smiling at Benny as he passed them, Benny smiling back and tipping a half salute. Though he’d already been there almost a month—or six weeks? strange, that he couldn’t remember exactly—Eli continued to be amazed at how casual the staff was when it came to Russell; except for his own set of keys, Benny seemed to have as much run of the place as any of the doctors or nurses.
The large room echoed with sounds from the kitchen—the metal clang of trays being dumped, water splashing, the occasional burst of laughter or conversation between the janitor and the cooks. Benny and Eli sat in companionable silence for a few moments, Eli not thinking about much of anything at all. He’d found it was easier to get through the days that way, just existing, surviving, going through the motions of being a man; he even found some enjoyment in the false reality. Between his numbness and the distraction of Benny’s amiable personality, he could forget himself for hours at a time. At night, though, when he was alone in his mind, in the dark, listening to the snores and gasps and rustlings of the other men in their cots . . . then, he still had to think about what he’d done.
“Do you have children, Eli?”
Eli looked up from his cold coffee, feeling a flicker of self-hatred at Benny’s innocent question. He cleared his throat, nodding once.
“A daughter,” he said. He thought about saying more, thought he should say more—some qualifying statement that made it clear what kind of father he’d been to her. Absent was the word. Ruri had never complained about his position’s unlikely hours, that his postings had taken him away from her and the baby for months at a time. The baby, the little girl, the teenager . . . the young woman who surely despised him now. God knew she had reason enough, even before what had happened with Ruri . . .
What I did to Ruri, he thought, forcing the thought to stick.
If Benny noticed his discomfort, he didn’t show it. “I have a baby on the way,” he said, a proud smile breaking across his face. “My girl, Cassie . . . she’s expecting any time now.”
Eli smiled hesitantly, not sure what to say. How long had Benny been in? Had he even told him? From the way he came and went, Eli had had the impression that Benny had been there awhile. Longer than nine months, anyway.
And as proud as he must be, she’s out there. He’s stuck in here, with the rest of us.
“That’s nice,” Eli said, stepping car
efully. “So, ah . . . Cassie is your girlfriend?”
Benny didn’t answer directly. He sat back from the table, sighing. “I miss her, very much. I thought I’d be okay here, but knowing that she’s waiting for me at home, about to have our baby . . . I don’t know. It’s important for me to be here, but . . . but relationships don’t go on hold. People keep moving and growing, and if you spend too much time away, you miss things. You miss life.”
The way he spoke . . . Eli was struck anew by the peculiar phrasing that Benny so often chose. It was as if he felt he had some choice in the matter, as though staying at the sanitarium was optional.
“What’s your daughter like?” Benny asked.
Eli tried to shrug it off. “Women. You know.”
“Not really,” Benny said. “How is it, having a daughter? What kind of baby was she?”
A clear, perfect memory surfaced, of looking into her tiny face, at her dark eyes, so like Ruri’s, the baby gazing back up at him, lips pursed, a hint of a frown creasing her silken brow. As though she wasn’t sure what to make of him, wasn’t sure if he was entirely trustworthy.
“She was . . . she was perfect,” Eli said, barely aware that he was speaking. “A perfect baby. She looked like her mother, but acted more like me, I think. She was careful. Watchful.”
“And now?” Benny asked.
“She’s got some of her mother in her, some of me, I suppose,” Eli said, picturing Pria’s lovely face, a crooked smile across her fine mouth. “But she’s mostly her own. Stubborn as a mule. Smart. Beautiful. She’s got an impulsive streak in her, too.”
Eli smiled, remembering. “When she was twelve, she decided she wanted to go to the beach for the day. Her mother told her that she was too busy to take her, so Pria actually took Ruri’s car. Just borrowed the keys and drove off, happy as you please. She made it three blocks before running over a curb; ended up in a neighbor’s rosebushes.” He shook his head. “She could barely reach the pedals, didn’t even know where the beach was, but thought she’d give it a shot.”