Out of the Cocoon

by William Leisner

  Vinx all but threw the diminutive Soloman in as he reached the hatch, and Gomez leapt in after, moving quickly for the cockpit. The engines came to life just as Corsi saw the leading edge of the mob clear the arch of the portal, with Reade Latta leading the charge.

  Both Vinx and Angelopoulos hesitated before following the others into the shuttle, neither wanting to be the first to leave their colleagues to face the approaching mob. Corsi was about to bark at them for holding up…but stopped when she saw that the approaching mob was not, in fact, approaching them.

  Instead, they had split into two groups, each moving for either side of the plaza, where the bomb throwers were hidden. Corsi watched as a squad of Bringloidi rushed the hillock to the north, weapons blazing, while another squad of cloned gunmen climbed the grassy knoll at the other end of the plaza. The chants were replaced by screams, and an orange glow blossomed from behind the rise, apparently from a lit firebomb either dropped or shot apart while still in the assailant’s hand.

  Meanwhile, Reade Latta marched up to Corsi, a swaggering spring to his step. Clearly, this entire episode had invigorated him. “Are you and yours all right?”

  Corsi nodded, watching as flames and smoke lifted above the hill to the south. The Mariposan crew roughly dragged a pair of teenage Bringloidi boys up over the rise back toward the plaza, one crying out and holding his burnt and bloody hands out in front of him. “Who are they? Dieghanists?”

  Latta snapped his head around, eyes blazing. “You haven’t caused enough trouble, you gotta be looking to stir up s’more?” he practically growled at her.

  “What?”

  “You want to know who they are? They’re nobody. They’re a bunch of hoodlums you got all riled up with yer pokin’ and yer proddin’—”

  “That we got riled up?”

  “Well, who were they attackin’, now?”

  Corsi caught herself before she could be dragged any further into this purposeless conversation. She took a deep breath, turned, and ushered Vinx and Angelopoulos into the shuttle ahead of her. She climbed up front as Vinx shut the hatch, and folded herself into the pilot’s seat beside Gomez. “Let’s find Lense and get the hell away from this damned planet.”

  Lense looked up from the box to the young woman’s face, and knew these disks held Sandra Vallis’s research notes. “Kara…how did you…?”

  “She always wanted to be sure she had backup copies of her work in a safe place. She trusted me…”

  Lense was overwhelmed by the sudden transition from hopelessness to wide-eyed optimism. My God, she thought. This is too good to be—

  And, as if in karmic punishment for that thought, Kara snapped the lid back on the box and pulled it to her chest, clutching her long fingers tightly around the edges. She looked up into Lense’s eyes, her expression showing a graveness that seemed beyond her years.

  “Take me with you.”

  Lense’s eyebrows arched. “What?”

  “I need to get away from here,” she said plainly. “I know I haven’t had a lot of formal education, but I’m always reading stuff off the subspace, and I’m a hard worker, and if I were only given a chance to do more—”

  “Kara….” Lense said, searching for the softest way of dissuading her, one that would not lose her the disks. “If it were up to me…this isn’t the kind of thing where you can just make a snap decision.”

  “Dr. Elizabeth, please,” she said, in a tone that sounded not so much like a plea as simple, weary despair. “I can’t stay here. I can’t. You’ve seen how Dr. Victor treats me. Like being Bringloidi makes me less of a person. Even Dr. Sandra, when she was mentoring me—she wasn’t so bad, but she still…” She stopped herself, uneasy speaking ill of the dead. “I’ll never be anything more than what I am if I stay here.”

  Lense bit her lower lip as she considered the young woman. As she did, her combadge came to life. “Corsi to Lense.”

  She tapped her badge. “Lense here.”

  “We’re airborne and headed for your location, Doctor.” Even as Corsi related this news, Lense could already hear the humming engines of the small craft growing close. “What’s your situation? Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, fine,” she frowned, then looked back to Kara, wearing a hope-against-hope look on her face. Lense sighed and her shoulders dropped. There was no guarantee, even with Sandra Vallis’s files, that she would be able to save the Mariposan gene pool. But if she could save just one person…

  “We are going to be taking on a passenger, though, Commander,” she said, which drew a wide grin as a response.

  Chapter

  11

  David Gold tabbed open the door to the guest cabin. He saw the young woman who’d been sitting on the single bunk, staring at the stars out the portal, immediately jump to her feet at the soft hydraulic hiss and turn to face him. “Kara McClay. I’m David Gold, captain of the da Vinci.”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied, putting her hand out for him to take. “I saw you earlier in the lab with Dr. Elizabeth.” Her palm was dry and she made strong eye contact, but Gold could clearly tell that she was as nervous as hell having to talk with him.

  Gold resisted his natural urge to put her at ease. He folded his hands behind his back instead, and slowly paced the cabin. It had the same layout as his own captain’s quarters—a single bunk, desk and chair, set of shelves, computer, replicator, and small ’fresher. Otherwise, it was completely Spartan, with none of the homey touches his or any of the other crew quarters had. Perhaps that would make a subconscious impression on the girl.

  After about a minute of silence, Gold turned to face McClay again. “Have a seat.” She settled back onto the edge of the bunk, while Gold leaned on the edge of the desk. “Ms. McClay, I want to tell you that I appreciate your help in recovering Dr. Vallis’s research.”

  “You’re welcome, Captain,” she said with a shy smile.

  Gold did not return the smile. “What I don’t particularly appreciate, however, is the fact that you used this material, which Prime Ministers Granger and Odell had already granted us unconditionally, to extort a commitment from one of my officers.”

  It took a moment for McClay to find her tongue and respond. “I know that what I did wasn’t very fair to Dr. Elizabeth…or to you, sir. If you wanted to, you could put me into your transporter and send me right back and I couldn’t do anything about it. All I can do is…ask for your mercy.”

  Gold couldn’t help but snort at that. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just that, even as a captain, I’m not used to quite that degree of deference, not on this ship, anyhow.” He paused, turning more serious. “I want to make sure you understand exactly what it is you’re getting yourself into here, Ms. McClay. You’ve lived a very isolated life here, and on Bringloid before. It’s a very different universe out there. Reading about it is a very different thing from living it. And, you’re going to be living it largely on your own, with no one to rely on but yourself. Are you ready for that?”

  McClay lifted her chin and looked the captain straight in the eye, all hint of her earlier nervousness dissolved away. “Yes,” she answered. “More than I can tell you.”

  Lense was waiting in the corridor when Gold emerged from the ship’s guest quarters. “Well?” she asked expectantly.

  Gold gave her a crooked smile. “This is something they teach at Starfleet Medical? How to identify smart, promising young people on backwater planets?”

  Lense looked nonplussed. “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “Private joke. Forget it,” he replied as he started toward the turbolift, the doctor falling in step beside him. He had been quite surprised by Kara McClay. He’d seen her at work in Lense’s ward earlier, and had listened in bemusement as the doctor, en route back to the ship on the Shirley, rambled enthusiastically about the potential she saw in the young Bringloidi. But when he’d gone into his chat with McClay, it was not with a good feeling about her.

  “As you said,” the captain told Lense
as they entered the lift, “given all the circumstances, she is quite an impressive young woman.”

  Seconds later they entered sickbay, and headed for the diagnostic lab. Gomez and Soloman were already absorbed in their work. The Bynar was hunched over a bulky piece of auxiliary equipment sitting on top of the table console, with a long coil of opticable running between it and the panel interface. Gomez, meanwhile, was studying readouts on the large wall-sized monitors, tracking the progress of their download. And curiously, the EMH had been activated, and was standing immobile in the corner, a strangely pensive look on its face. Gomez looked up as they entered, pushing a lock of dark hair away from her face. “Captain.”

  Gold nodded back. “Gomez. How are we doing?”

  Gomez simply sighed, while Soloman turned from his console and said, “We’ve so far downloaded the data from fifteen of sixty-seven disks.” The machine in front of him beeped, and a small door popped open. Soloman extracted a red disk and replaced it with another from a small wooden box sitting at his left elbow. “Unfortunately, we are restrained by the physical limitations of this technology, in regard to the speed of data retrieval.”

  “How long until we have all the data in?” Gold asked.

  “Approximately one hour, thirty-eight minutes.”

  “Which is why we brought the EMH on line,” Gomez said.

  “Yes, I was wondering,” said Lense, looking over to the holographic doctor.

  Noting the shift of focus toward him, the hologram straightened to attention. “Dr. Vallis’s notes on her rop’ngor research and experimentation are being loaded directly into my program matrix, where I am able to organize each new file into a more dynamic systematization. This will allow for more immediate analysis of the work as a whole, and quicker identification of the most promising avenues for further research.”

  Gold nodded, impressed. Though the EMH program had lost the equivalent of several years of practical experience due to the damage done at Galvan VI, the refurbished version seemed somewhat more capable of adapting and learning than “Emmett” had been.

  No matter how impressive everyone’s efforts, however, Gold knew they were likely to fall short.

  “Good work, people. Carry on.” He then turned to Lense and, with a tilt of his head, indicated her office. Once the door slid shut behind them, he said, “Lense, assuming Vallis had been working on this problem for the last ten or so years with…let’s say mixed results, how likely do you think that, even with all this, the cure is going to immediately reveal itself to you?”

  “Honestly? Not great, Captain. But that’s not reason—”

  “—not reason not to try, no, of course not,” Gold said. “Here’s the thing, Lense. Mariposa has been handed off from the S.C.E. to the Diplomatic Corps. They have a ship, the Hammarskjold, en route right now.”

  “I thought the prime ministers were still dead-set against any negotiation; they want what they want, period.”

  Gold frowned. “Yes, but that’s for Captain Conley and Ambassador Crane to deal with now. We get to deal, instead, with a failing seawater desalinization plant on Drovoer II. Once you’ve briefed the Hammarskjold’s CMO on whatever you find in these files—”

  “No.”

  Gold stopped, and simply stared at Lense with both eyebrows raised.

  “Sir, I have an obligation—”

  Gold cut her off. “Your first obligation is to this ship and her crew. I know that you want to see this thing through, but as long as there is no immediate medical threat, I can’t justify delaying—”

  “Then I request a transfer.”

  Again, Lense stunned him into silence. “Say that again?”

  “I will not walk away from this, Captain. You will not make me walk away from this.”

  Gold studied her, searching for whatever it was she wasn’t saying. “What is this all about, Lense?”

  “What is this about?” she echoed, sounding incredulous.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Lense blinked at him, her head shaking like a miscalibrated warp coil. “It’s about…about miscarriages, and stillbirths, and…and…fatal birth defects and women…women dying…”

  “No, Lense. What is this really about?”

  Lense lowered her brow and all but sneered at him. “I don’t know, Captain, why don’t you tell me? If you don’t believe me, you tell me what it’s about!”

  “All right. It has something to do with what happened on the Jabari world.”

  Her face turned to stone. “Oh, really?”

  “Really. Because whatever it is, it’s been eating at you since well before we got to Mariposa.”

  Lense snorted in disdain. “Excuse me, Captain. I have work to do.”

  She tried to slip around him to the door, but Gold grabbed on to her upper arm and restrained her. “You painted a hellish picture of life on that planet, Lense. War, death, filth, disease, hopelessness. But you didn’t tell everything in your debriefing, did you?”

  Lense stood stock-still, saying nothing and keeping her eyes forward, avoiding Gold’s.

  “You’re doing yourself no good keeping this bottled up, Elizabeth. You know that.”

  She turned to the captain, her eyes deep and filled with barely contained emotion…

  …and with a hard yank, pulled her arm free from his grasp. She glared at him with unreadable eyes for a long extra moment, then without a word walked out of her office. Gold remained where he stood, replaying the entire exchange in his mind and hoping to convince himself he had not, by reaching out to her, pushed her away past the point of retrieval.

  Carol Abramowitz watched as Kara McClay poked unenthusiastically at the plate of gespar in front of her. The young woman had purposely selected an alien, exotic-sounding dish from the replicator menu, and appeared now to regret it. “Vulcan food is something of an acquired taste,” Abramowitz said, as she scraped the last bits of icoberry torte off her plate. “If you want something else, go ahead. It’s no problem.”

  “No,” McClay answered, laying down her fork and picking up a teacup. “Just not as hungry as I thought I was.”

  The two of them had the mess hall to themselves, after having completed the grand tour of the ship. The cultural specialist was usually not the first crew-person chosen to show visitors around a starship, especially not on a ship full of tech-heads who could actually tell you why access tunnels were called “Jeffries tubes.” But Captain Gold had asked Abramowitz to do the honors, in part, she suspected, so she could see that the joined Mariposan-Bringloidi colony had managed to produce at least one nice, bright, well-adjusted young person.

  She might have been more encouraged if this same young woman wasn’t now leaving said colony.

  “Nerves?” Abramowitz asked, grabbing both their dishes and returning them to the replicator for recycling.

  “You could say that,” she said. “It’s like seeing all the different futures that might happen, and knowing you have almost no control over which one.”

  “All you can do is make the best decision you can, and hope everything else pans out.”

  McClay nodded. “Dr. Elizabeth, she’s a good doctor, isn’t she?”

  “One of the best,” Abramowitz said as she sat back down across from the Bringloidi woman. “Top of her class at Starfleet Medical. Completely dedicated to her patients. I’m sure, if there’s any way to help your people, she’ll find it.”

  Something odd flickered across McClay’s face then, in reaction, Abramowitz thought, to the term “your people.” She had overheard Lense making the case for taking McClay aboard to the captain, describing the animosity of some of her Mariposan patients toward McClay, and the young woman’s poise in its face. As well adjusted as she may have seemed on the surface, she had probably accumulated her share of emotional scars over the last decade of childhood.

  Whatever unpleasant thought had passed through McClay’s mind just then, it was gone now, and she simply nodded. “But you think they need more than just
medical help, don’t you?”

  Abramowitz sighed. “It’s a difficult process. People have to adjust—”

  “Why?” McClay interrupted.

  Abramowitz cocked her head. “Why?”

  “Why do people have to adjust to the new culture? Why doesn’t the culture adjust to the people?”

  “Well, it does. Living cultures are affected by all kinds of different influences, external and internal…”

  “But people still…I mean, you don’t choose your culture. I was born on Bringloid, so I’m Bringloidi. Then we were brought to Mariposa, where everyone was Mariposan. And we were told, ‘now you must all live this new United Ficus culture.’ But why do I have to be any of them? Why are these cultures more important than the people in them?”

  It was a good question, and one Abramowitz would have enjoyed discussing. Just then, though, they were interrupted. “Lense to Abramowitz.”

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  “Is Kara McClay still with you?”

  “Yes, right here.”

  “I need to see her in the diagnostics lab.”

  There was something in Lense’s tone that Abramowitz felt did not bode well. “It’s not good news, is it?” Abramowitz asked.

  “I need to speak with her here, now.”

  Taken aback by the vehemence of the doctor’s directive, Abramowitz turned her head back to consider McClay’s reaction. The nervousness in her eyes was now, to her surprise, replaced by a kind of calm resignation. “On my way,” she said to the comm, and then to her tour guide as she stood up, “Thank you, Dr. Carol.”

  “Kara?” Abramowitz called as the young woman turned toward the mess hall doors. She didn’t stop or turn back; whatever she thought Lense had to tell her, she was clearly set to face it.