Burning Dreams

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  The deck had been stacked from the beginning. He’d done the best he could. Why wasn’t it enough? Why did the Talos incident still feel like unfinished business? Tossing and turning, unable to sleep as his ship, his life, moved ever farther and farther away from Talos IV and Vina, he fought against the urge to go back and claim her, plead with her to reconsider. Was it his own impulse, or were the Talosians still manipulating him? Pike could not know.

  But he had to assure that no other human would ever have to endure what he had. And though he knew it not only condemned the Talosians to eventual extinction, but Vina to lifelong solitude (Would she be content very long with the illusion of him? He doubted it. But she had made her choice), Pike did the only thing he knew how.

  His command report was incorporated into General Order 7, recommending that no human ever again visit Talos IV.

  16

  2262: Somewhere in the

  Kanes System

  It was a waking nightmare. But everything about this mission, Christopher Pike thought grimly, had felt wrong from the beginning.

  He thought he had seen everything in his first five years as captain of the Enterprise. He was wrong. In the fading light, he glanced once more at the clearing where four of his crew had met their deaths. No trace remained of his comrades, but their killers were everywhere. There was nothing he and his science officer could do but wait for nightfall, and hope to escape.

  During the yearlong layover while his ship was undergoing a refit, he’d decided he needed a refit of his own, and toyed with the idea of asking for a desk assignment, something close enough to Earth where he could visit the ranch more often. Charlie and Hobelia were still in their prime, still “fit and flourishing” as Hobelia liked to put it. If he’d seen them every day, Chris might not have noticed the subtle signs of aging, but after five years away they were undeniable. Added to the number of crew he’d lost over five years in space, they made him all too aware of his own mortality.

  And then there was Tango.

  With advances in veterinary science over the centuries, it wasn’t unusual for a horse to live past fifty, so at twenty-seven Tango was really just on the cusp of middle age. He still lived up to his name, nodding his head and dancing sideways whenever Chris approached the paddock, but the burnished bay coat was flecked with white, and his gait had slowed a bit, especially on steep trails. He was no longer a mischievous youngster, and Chris wondered how much more time he’d have with the old devil if he accepted another five-year mission.

  So he was surprised, as the refit neared completion, to find himself restless, bored with the routine of paper-pushing and staff meetings, feeling as if his brain was rusting, eager to get back into space. Charlie found it amusing.

  “Bit more of the old man in you than you’d maybe like to admit,” he suggested, the brown eyes twinkling.

  “You think so?” Chris wondered, his smile bemused and more than half frown.

  “Wouldn’t have anything to do with the young lady you brought by for dinner the other week, would it?”

  “It might,” Chris said, his face clouding. “That was a mistake.”

  “What? Bringing her to meet your parents, or getting involved with her in the first place?” Charlie wanted to know.

  Chris didn’t answer.

  He hadn’t wanted to get involved with the young woman he’d met at the officers’ club, on the arm of her father, who just happened to be his commanding officer while he was planetside. But she’d more or less attached herself to him, and it had taken not a little diplomacy to persuade her they really weren’t meant for each other without jeopardizing his career prospects.

  There had been an uncomfortable few moments in his CO’s office one morning a week or so later when the commodore had asked Pike rather pointedly what his “intentions” were, and Pike had responded, “Effective now, sir? None.” But he’d braved the older man’s glare without blinking, until the commodore remembered aloud that his subordinates’ private lives were just that—private—and they’d gone on to talk about repair estimates and how soon Enterprise could be expected to be back in space, and the commodore’s daughter was not mentioned again.

  Extricated from what could have been a very unpleasant situation, Pike thought he’d be relieved. But when he found himself getting in the way of the repair crews at Planitia and underfoot at the ranch, he decided to spend some off-duty time exploring the planet of his birth. But wherever he went, he kept seeing Vina’s face in crowds.

  Too many forces kept pushing him in directions he hadn’t meant to go in. He found himself assigned as part of the Starfleet presence at the yearly Federation Council Plenary Meeting in Paris. He’d tried to respectfully decline, request they send someone else. The last place on Earth he wanted to be was Paris.

  Paris was where Vina had been born, where her parents probably still lived, if they were still alive. (“This is Vina. Her parents are dead”—an illusion, not a real man, had told him that.) He remembered the impact that merely finding her image in the library computer had had on him. He really did not want to go to Paris.

  But his CO insisted on it and, in view of his recent history with his CO’s daughter, Pike decided it was probably wise to comply.

  Much of his time in Paris was spent cooling his heels between meetings and receptions. Unable to stay cooped up in a hotel suite with the city at his feet, he found himself walking at all hours of the day and night. There he seemed to encounter Vina at every turn.

  She haunted him, her petite, graceful figure, the feline blue eyes and spun-sugar hair appearing through the distortion of storefront windows, sipping café au lait or cognac alone at the tables of sidewalk cafés as if waiting for him, slipstreaming through the crowds along the Champs-Elysées, an apparition in a short skirt and striped sailor blouse, a dark beret perched at an improbable angle on her pale hair, glancing at him over her shoulder in one of the many narrow cobbled streets in the older arrondissements of the city. When he blinked, these apparitions became other women entirely, strangers on whose face and form his mind (or the Talosians’?) had momentarily superimposed those of the woman he had left behind.

  Was it by his own will or the trace of that Talosian mind within his own that he found himself standing on the cobbles outside a traditional patisserie in the heart of the city, exactly where the city directory had indicated it would be, looking exactly as he had imagined it would?

  A small bell tinkled as he closed the door behind him. To his relief a young, slightly plump, dark-haired woman behind the counter smiled and wished him “Bonjour” and asked could she perhaps help Monsieur with something?

  Maybe the shop has changed hands, he thought, almost hoping it had.

  He returned the young woman’s smile and said he would like to look around, and might have done just that, then thanked her and escaped unscathed. But his eye was caught by a set of holograms suspended in midair off to the side of the long counter, above a few small tables where a handful of locals congregated to savor their dark-roast coffee and croissants.

  He’d never been to a ballet, but Pike could recognize a dance troupe in the first group holo, a corps de ballet of graceful young men and women, mostly human, with a duet poised downstage in front of them. The female, clad in white feathers to look like a swan, was Andorian; she bowed from the waist, her outstretched hand almost touching the floor. The partner who held her about that delicate waist was a human male of slightly less than average height, his fine-boned face turned toward the camera so that it was clear he was meant to be the focus of the photograph.

  A second holo showed the same man, somewhat older, dressed in black, a stark white towel around his neck, instructing a young Vulcan male at the barre in a room surrounded by mirrors. Again, the camera’s focus was on the human male, his posture even in repose graceful and assured. Whoever had taken the holo—the signature Violette was scrawled in glowing letters at the bottom—had clearly been very fond of him.

  The third hol
o, centered between the other two, was again of the graceful man, on one knee on the floor of the same mirrored room, holding the waist of a tiny dancer facing away from him toward the camera, a little girl of no more than seven or eight years, in the traditional pink tutu and toe shoes, arms curved above her head, balanced perfectly en pointe. This time the focus was on her, and the brilliant smile she presented to the world. Behind her, her father had tried to look serious, but he could not help beaming with pride.

  The three images, capturing moments of grace and joy long past, visited Pike with an almost physical pain. He turned away from them abruptly to thank the young woman, intending to say he did not wish to purchase anything today, thank you, and make his exit, but too late. The young woman had been replaced behind the counter (too preoccupied with the images, he hadn’t heard the shuffle of slippered footsteps, the soft exchange of words in French) by a petite elderly woman in a flowered dress covered with a long white apron. Pike would have recognized those eyes and that smile anywhere.

  This is what Vina would have looked like at this age, he thought, then realized he was thinking of her in the past tense, as if she were dead, as anyone on Earth who had known her—including this tiny woman studying him so intently—no doubt assumed she was.

  He was about to blurt out “Your daughter is alive!” when the woman spoke.

  “Monsieur is admiring my family. My daughter was lost to me some years ago—an accident in space.”

  She said it calmly, with only a little trace, not of sadness, but of regret, as if thinking of all the years her daughter might have lived, if only.

  “My husband…” she went on even as Pike drew breath to speak. “…I have lost only recently. It is one year today. His heart was not strong. I think because to lose a child is the saddest thing a parent can bear, and for a father to lose a daughter…”

  She checked herself, as if wondering why she was telling this to a stranger, however receptive. Or perhaps, Pike thought, seeing one of the locals at the tables look up grimly, she repeated this tale to everyone who entered the shop.

  It was then that he asked himself what he would accomplish by telling Vina’s mother what he knew. What would it serve? The truth? After more than two decades of accepting her grief, what truth would be served by his giving her a new one?

  “Monsieur will forgive me,” she said in her soft voice. “I am being a poor hostess. You come to buy sweets, not to listen to bitterness. How may I help you?”

  He had ordered some pastries then, inventing some story about attending a Starfleet reception the night before at which this particular patisserie had been mentioned. This brought a wintery smile to her face, a pride in the work of a lifetime. Their hands touched briefly as she handed him the small cardboard box, tied up with string from a spool that hung above her head over the counter in a tradition centuries old. She cut the string with practiced ease, using a small blade attached to a ring on one finger, then presented the box to Pike. The hands that touched his were Vina’s hands, warm and giving, seasoned by the passage of time.

  Pike thanked her and hurried out of the shop, along the cobbled street, the pastry box clutched carelessly in one hand, his throat constricting. Impatiently he tossed the box into the first trash receptacle he could find, regretting it the instant he’d done so.

  And for some reason he felt compelled to tell Spock about the encounter years later.

  He had to do something to distract himself from the events of the day while he and Spock waited for the coldest part of the night, when it might be safe to move again. The predators pursuing them, they had discovered, were cold-blooded and could not move about once the temperature dropped below a certain point during the coldest part of the night. Until then, there was nothing for the two of them to do but wait.

  Pike and his science officer were the only survivors of a landing party gone horribly wrong, trapped on a planetoid without a name swarming with reptilian beings intent on capturing them and eating them alive.

  He’d seen it happen to the fourth member of the landing party. They’d been too late to do anything for the other three.

  They were on routine patrol in the final year of a second five-year mission. They’d been mapping a previously uncharted system, one of a five-star cluster in the region, and had decided one of the inner worlds looked inviting enough to stop and investigate in person. Scanners had found indications of some trace ores that might be worth harvesting, and no life-forms larger than a prairie dog. A large temperate zone suggested research could be combined with a little shore leave.

  “Indications of considerable vegetation, Captain,” Mr. Spock reported, interpreting the scans. “Much of it in the form of pericarpal and indehiscent drupoid arborescent foliage.”

  “Mind giving me that in small words?” Pike quipped. Spock had mellowed a bit since the first mission—he was less often compelled to shout for what he assumed was inferior human hearing—but he was as literal-minded as ever. Either that, or he had a wit so dry no one on board had yet been able to fully appreciate it.

  “Berry bushes and fruit trees,” Number One remarked from the helm. “Might be nice to have some fresh produce for a change, if the stuff is safe for humanoid consumption.”

  “You may have a point there,” Pike mused, signing yet one more diagnostic report. “The very least we can do is find out.”

  They’d been mapping uninhabited systems for weeks. Of the five stars in this cluster, one contained a single planet which suggested it might have been inhabited at one time. The rest were either gas giants or near-barren rocks populated by nothing more intelligent than lichens. In comparison, this world looked like paradise.

  Pike found himself wanting very much to go hiking on real soil with a real sky over his head, maybe cool his face with the water from a real stream. “Nothing to indicate any habitation, even historically, Science Officer? Wouldn’t want to go picnicking in somebody else’s backyard.”

  “Negative, sir,” Spock reported, looking as if he were tempted to ask what the captain meant by “picnicking” in this context. “No signs of habitation, no ruins, no orbital construction. Only normal background hydrocarbons in the atmosphere. And no indication of ship traffic of any kind anywhere in the system.”

  “Any inhabited worlds nearby that might claim this as part of their territory?” Pike asked.

  “Just that one we scanned a ways back,” Number One chimed in, bringing up a schematic. “And, from the looks of things, it may have been inhabited at one time, but it isn’t now.”

  “Indeed,” Spock concurred. “There is evidence of considerable activity on the second of two planets orbiting this star…” He indicated. “However, preliminary scans indicate no advanced life-forms.”

  Pike studied the readouts that meant ship’s traffic, orbital satellites, numerous industrialized areas on the surface.

  “A mechanized outpost of some kind?” he wondered.

  “Very possibly, Captain,” Spock concurred.

  “Interesting,” Pike mused. “And no indication any of those ships have ventured in this direction?”

  “None at present.”

  “Well, in that case…” Pike handed the report back to the ensign from engineering who had brought it for his signature, and allowed himself the luxury of a yawn and a stretch. “…captain’s discretion suggests I lead a landing party for a look around, and if nothing tries to eat us, we may be able to combine business and pleasure.”

  He had no way of knowing how soon his words would come back to haunt him.

  The planet seemed idyllic at first. Slightly smaller than Earth, it had a concomitantly lighter gravity, which made it hard to resist bouncing on one’s feet. The landing party—Pike, Spock, a biologist, a geologist, and a security team—had beamed down in a kind of sunny meadow surrounded by primeval forest. Trees that would have put coast redwoods to shame towered above smaller, more plentiful specimens heavy with blossoms and fruit in appealing scents and colors. Tricorder re
adings indicated the fruit was safe to eat. Chisholm, the team biologist, quickly confirmed this with some empirical testing.

  “Delicious, Captain,” she reported, offering Pike a section of what looked like a football-sized nectarine. “Kind of a cross between a custard apple and a kiwifruit.”

  “We should have brought baskets,” Pike suggested, though he waved the fruit away for now, turning in place a full three hundred sixty degrees to look carefully around them. Something about this place made him uneasy. For one thing, it was entirely too quiet. The predominant local fauna, small gray-brown marsupials with batlike ears whose subterranean habitats dotted the open field with small molehills, had gathered in a mob to chatter angrily at them when they first beamed down but, seeing that the newcomers, who were much larger than they were, were unfazed by their threats, they’d quickly ducked back into their lairs. Once they were gone, the silence was uncanny.

  “Science Officer? Any evidence of birds or insects?”

  “Negative, Captain,” Spock reported, frowning at the readings on his tricorder.

  “Predators of any kind? Something must eat the marsupials to keep the population down.”

  “None in the vicinity, Captain,” Spock replied. He might as well have still been on the ship for all the notice he was taking of the landscape around him, except as it could be reduced to scanner readings. At last he looked up, his frown deepening. “Curious. The plant life clearly reproduces by cross-pollination, but without avian or insect agents, I am at somewhat of a loss to explain how it is successful in doing so.”

  “Maybe the wind,” Chisholm suggested. She nodded toward the edge of the meadow where the sunlight was particularly bright. There was a constant stirring in the air, and as they turned away from the sun they could see golden dustings of pollen carried on the breeze.

  “I’d still be happier if there were birds,” Pike said vaguely, not sure why he’d said that. Maybe the sunlight was getting to him; he felt like lying down in the long fragrant grass and taking a nap. Instead, he focused.