“Does it matter?” she asked, moving over to look out the window at the shimmering Axis portal. “It’s over. I’d rather just move on.”
“But that’s what I’m saying, Teresa. I’m not sure it has to be.” He stepped closer. “It would mean a great deal to me to be able to show my affection for you in the way that is natural and routine for my people. And after what happened . . . I think maybe it would not be as impossible as we’ve assumed. Not for us.” His hands clasped her shoulders. “Teresa . . . maybe if we proceeded carefully . . . if we taught each other . . .”
“Stop,” she said, stepping away and turning to face him. “God, Ranjea, there’s still so much of me that wants nothing more.” She shuddered. “But what Lirahn did to me . . . what she did to you . . . it was an assault. After I . . . came down and could process it with a clear head . . . I felt so violated. On your behalf as much as mine, that she turned such a beautiful, giving part of you into a weapon.”
He shook his head. “That was her own folly. She hurt me, yes, and she hurt you through me. That places a burden on me too, but the burden is part of her, not me. It doesn’t change what my sexuality means to me.”
“Well, maybe you can separate the joy of it from the invasion. But I can’t.” She gazed at him, aware of what this meant to him, how courageous and kind his offer had been. “I’m so sorry, Ranjea. You’re a dear friend, and a great partner. But I think it’ll be a while before I’m comfortable letting you touch me again.”
He gazed at her for a long time, and she let him. Finally he nodded. “All right. All I want is your happiness.”
She smiled. “It’s okay, boss. We’ll be okay.”
He blinked quite a few times, then sighed. “Well, it’s all right. There’s a Deltan medical officer aboard the Capitoline. He and I should be able to satisfy each other’s physical needs, at least.”
“Good, fine. See you tomorrow?”
He smiled, nodded, and let himself out. She stared at the closed door for a time . . . then blinked. “‘He and I’?” Maybe touching’s off-limits, but I wonder . . .
“No,” she said aloud, shaking her head. “Uh-uh, Teresa. Some things really are best left to the imagination.”
Third Moon of Rakon IV
5 Zh-engyué, Year of the Water Tiger, Cycle 84
(A Thursday)
06:11 UTC
Sometimes Dulmur was surprised by the robustness of the fabric of spacetime. Even after all that had happened in and around Vard’s facility over the past several . . . whatever, once the various artificial influences on its spacetime metric were eased off with proper care, it soon settled back down into a normal configuration—or nearly so. “It’ll take a while to settle down fully,” Jena Noi told the DTI agents. “We’ll install some stabilizers to keep any anomalies from resurfacing. Like a bandage while the spacetime heals.”
When things had settled down, there were still a number of temporal or quantum duplicates of several of the facility’s occupants, but that was a good thing, in a way. A lot of the people here had died in one or more iterations, but there were enough temporal and quantum spares that the final survival rate was effectively one hundred percent. In fact, that was part of the cease-fire arrangement; the various factions worked together to ensure that at least one copy of everyone was recovered before their respective timestreams were quantum-converged back into the whole. As for the remaining duplicates, Noi and the TIC were already in the process of reintegrating them via transporter. Where the duplicate physicists were concerned, according to Noi, the reintegration would be calibrated so that only the earliest set of memories was preserved, leaving the physicists in the dark about most of what had occurred here. “We don’t want them to get any head starts on their future discoveries,” she said.
As for the trio from the Enterprise, they were allowed to keep their memories, at least those of the versions that had been inside Elfiki’s stabilizer field, as thanks for their role in saving the day (and quite a few others), though of course they were sworn to strict secrecy. As for Elfiki herself, she was eager to return to her ship and her crewmates, which from her perspective she hadn’t seen in four months. “I keep thinking they’ll have given my quarters to someone else,” she told Dulmur, “until I remember I only left them a few hours ago. This is going to be strange—being so out of synch with my friends on board.”
“Do not worry,” Worf told her. “I have some experience with making such adjustments. Let me know if you need any assistance.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
“And hey,” Dulmur said, “you know Clare is just a subspace call away if you need to talk.”
“I know,” she said. “You know you all have my gratitude for helping me through this. But I think I’d really rather put this part of my life behind me and start moving forward again.”
“We must return to the Enterprise soon,” Worf told them. “If matters are resolved here, we will be needed elsewhere in the sector. The anomalies are dying down, at roughly the same pace with which they arose before the event, but there will be consequences to deal with.”
“That’s our department, Mister Worf,” Lucsly reminded him. Dulmur nudged him with an elbow. “But . . . we appreciate your assistance.” Worf nodded solemnly. Lucsly turned to Elfiki. “And thank you in particular, Lieutenant, for finding a way to make a difference without compromising the Temporal Prime Directive.” His eyes drifted to take in Commander Ducane, who stood nearby conferring with his cyber-enhanced troops. “I wish all of Starfleet would follow your example.”
The Enterprise team made their final farewells and departed. Dulmur saw that the uptime forces were beginning to withdraw as well. The Vorgons and Shirna had already left, and Rodal and Meneth had escorted the Na’kuhl off the premises and out of the century. But the TIC troops were still keeping a wary eye on the Romulan Augments, and Noi and Daniels were flanking Jamran Harnoth, keeping a close eye on the elusive Omegan. Trading a look, Lucsly and Dulmur made their way over to the three of them.
“This is unjust, you know,” Harnoth was saying as they approached. “The other factions are allowed to withdraw without penalty, but I am to be taken into custody? Why should my Augments continue to obey the cease-fire, then?”
“You negotiated in bad faith and tried to destroy everyone else here,” Daniels reminded him. “We all agreed that exempts you and your Augments from the agreement. The Augments will have their enhancements deactivated, and you’ll be tried for your crimes.”
Harnoth scoffed. “You’ll never track down all my Augments. The struggle will continue.”
Daniels leaned closer, speaking with deceptive softness. “There is still the matter of jurisdiction, you know. The thirty-first century has first claim on you, since we led the fight against you—and, well, since I’m one of the people you had killed. But you know, the TIC of 2774 makes a compelling case that as your contemporaries, they should have jurisdiction. Now, they’re not as bad yet as they are in Mister Ducane’s time, but still . . . the things they do to temporal criminals on your level . . .”
Harnoth was trying and failing to conceal his alarm. “Very well,” he grated. “I will cooperate in neutralizing my Augments of this century in exchange for being tried in the thirty-first.”
Jena Noi stepped around to face him. “You’re still up on some pretty damning charges,” she said. “It could help ameliorate your sentence if you tell us what you did to erase Shelan from history—and how we can bring her back.”
Harnoth chuckled. “There was no one thing,” he said. “Do you know how difficult it is to remove one person from history and ensure that nothing else is changed? It took years of planning and dozens of subtle manipulations to accomplish. It was a masterpiece of temporal engineering, the most satisfying work I’ve ever done.” His smile turned cruel. “And all the more satisfying because it was revenge on an ungrateful creation. If that revenge backfired and led to my arrest, then all the more necessity for the revenge itse
lf to stand. It’s only fair.”
Seething, Noi reached her dainty, strong hands toward his throat. But Lucsly placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let it go,” he told her. “Shelan knew the risks of this job. Further meddling with time on her behalf is the last thing she’d want. It would be too great a compromise of the principles she sacrificed her existence to uphold.”
Noi lowered her arms and stared at him for a long moment. “I’ll never really understand the DTI,” she said. “But I guess . . . whether I agree with it or not . . . if it’s what she would’ve wanted, then I owe it to her to respect that.”
Lucsly nodded. “Yes, you do.”
The uptime agent smiled sadly. “But don’t worry. She will be remembered. She may be forgotten in her own time, but future history will know what she did . . . who she was. I’ll make sure of that.”
“Thank you.”
After a respectful shared silence, Dulmur cleared his throat. “It just occurred to me to ask . . . did we win? Are your futures still intact? Does the temporal defense grid still get invented? Was this even the critical point at all?”
Noi traded a knowing smile with Daniels before the senior time agent escorted Harnoth away. “Sorry, Dulmur. You don’t need to know any more. All you need to know is that your time is safe now.”
“Really?” Lucsly asked. “After all the random attacks in recent months . . .. . .”
“All the ones that affected your territory were attempts to prevent this, and they failed. And the next plausible nexus point for the development of the defense grid is decades from now.” She looked at each man in turn, her gaze wistful. “I wouldn’t exactly say it’s safe for you to retire, but from here on in, the temporal incidents shouldn’t be as concentrated as they’ve been in the past year. This front of the Temporal Cold War has closed.”
Dulmur furrowed his brow. “And what about on your end? Now that Harnoth’s out of the picture, is the war finally over?”
She grew sadder. “A time war is never truly over. There are always other factions. That’s what happens when you fight across time. You inevitably overlap with other people’s time wars, and totally unrelated factions end up clashing, like Harnoth and the Sphere Builders, or allying, like us and the Aegis. It all becomes too big a mess to keep track of. And that’s not even counting the alternate realities.” She sighed. “But if you can stop the cold war from becoming hot, if you can minimize its impact on the natural flow of probability, then that’s a win.”
She noticed Daniels gesturing at her. “I have to go. I’m six hundred and sixty-eight years early for an appointment.” Lucsly glared in annoyance at the time-related humor, and Noi chuckled at his reaction. She pursed her lips. “Ahh, what the hell. Time is finite.”
She pulled Lucsly’s head down and smothered him with a deep, passionate kiss that went on for a good forty-seven seconds. When she broke away, she was panting, though Lucsly was as cool as ever. Jena seemed satisfied by what she saw in his eyes, though. “See you around the calendar, Gariff.” She strolled away with a spring in her step and waved idly over her shoulder. “Bye, Dulmur!”
Dulmur stared at her, then at his partner, then back at her—except, of course, she was no longer there. So he went back to glaring at Lucsly. “Now, that’s just totally unfair. Why didn’t I get a kiss? What have you got that I don’t?”
Was that the tiniest smile on Lucsly’s face? “Perfect timing.”
XXIV
13 Adar 6142 Anno Mundi, Hebrew Calendar A Friday
DTI Headquarters, Greenwich
14:08 UTC
Some information was too sensitive to transmit over subspace . . . and some news was too painful not to deliver in person. So it wasn’t until Garcia and Ranjea returned to headquarters, filled with prideful news of their success at the Axis of Time and their strengthening of ties with the Vomnin Confederacy, that they were told what had happened to Agent Shelan.
Andos nodded gravely at the shock and sorrow on their faces. “I suspected this. In a way, I hoped for it. The two of you were outside our time continuum at the moment the histories converged. As a result, you were shielded from the change. Out of all of us, only you still remember Shelan.”
At first, Garcia wished she didn’t. She envied the others their oblivion, their freedom from the devastation she felt now. But she reminded herself: Pain needs to be remembered. Learned from. Not erased. She looked at Ranjea, thought about how he must be dealing with his grief. Letting himself experience it as openly and deeply as any other passion . . . making it part of himself and growing from it. That was what she had always believed was right. What she did this job to uphold.
But it had rarely felt so hard.
Clare Raymond came over and embraced her. “I’ll help you through this,” she said. Garcia realized that, in a way, she was a temporal displacee all over again now. She was grateful Clare would still be here for her.
She met the others’ eyes, seeing the envy in them, the longing to know the Shelan she and Ranjea had known. “I wish I remembered her better,” she said. “I barely had time to get to know her. She was a great help during training, but since then, we’ve been so busy . . .”
Ranjea caught her gaze, keeping a respectful distance as he had since their conversation twelve days before. “I trained her, mentored her, worked with her for three years. But to me, it also feels I barely had a chance. Yet what I do remember is so vivid, so vibrant. Shelan had such passion for the work.” The other agents drew in around him, eager to relearn what they had forgotten. “Her desire to defend the timeline arose from a great injustice that was done to her people. And yet she was not vindictive. Her greatest desire was to protect, not avenge. She sought to give comfort where she could, both to her fellow agents and to the civilians whose lives she touched. And I believe she found true joy in the work.” His eyes glistened with tears. “The Deltans believe that when we die, we live on as pure love pervading other beings. We may not remember Shelan, but her quantum essence will never be completely gone from the continuum. Her love helped to keep our reality intact, and so it shall always be a part of our lives.”
Garcia was crying now too, as were a number of others. She found herself moving toward Ranjea and placing an arm around him. His arm went around her shoulder in turn, and she felt no distress, no arousal, only warmth and safety.
“Tell us more,” Felbog asked them. “What was it like to train her?”
“Ahh, well,” Ranjea said, “there was this one time I remember fondly. It was back when they flew that replica of the Enterprise XCV-330—you know, the prototype warp vessel that used ring-shaped engines like Vulcan craft of the era?—on the quarter-millennial anniversary of its final flight.” Felbog nodded. “Well, Shelan was so buried in her studies of the past and future that she was barely living in the present, barely paying any attention to everyday life. So Dulmur decided to teach her a bit of a lesson. We sent her to the site of an alleged temporal anomaly and let her stumble upon the ringship. She was so panicked that a critical piece of Federation history was in jeopardy and it was up to her, a mere trainee, to get the ship back home safely. She tried so hard to follow the protocols, to keep contact to a minimum, but the ringship crew spacewalked over in person, leaving her no choice but to let them come aboard. She was petrified that she might say or do something that would collapse two and a half centuries of history!
“When the ‘crew’ took off their helmets and she saw it was Dulmur and me, she turned so many colors that I thought her Cabal camouflage powers had activated! She almost threw us back out the lock without our helmets! But once it sank in what we were trying to do, she laughed longer and louder than any of us, and gleefully told all her classmates about it later without sparing herself a single iota of embarrassment.” He took a breath and went on more softly. “After that, she never forgot that what we’re working to protect, above all, is normal, everyday life. And she never let herself miss out on it again. She made the most of the time she had.”
/> Garcia snuggled closer against her partner, grateful that she could remember Shelan, that she could grieve for her. She and Ranjea would have to remember for all of them.
“Look at that,” Dulmur said to his partner as they stood on the outskirts of the group listening to Ranjea’s stories.
“What?” Lucsly said.
Dulmur pointed to Teresa Garcia. “Five and a half months ago, she couldn’t be in the same room with Ranjea without her warp core going into overload. Now it’s like they’ve been best friends forever. I’ve never seen a human that comfortable that close to a Deltan.” He frowned, peering closer. “Hey, you don’t think they actually . . . no, that’s impossible, it would never . . . could it?”
Lucsly glowered at him. “What matters is that they’ve meshed well as partners. That’s good. We’ve lost two agents in the past three hundred fifty-three days. It’s fortunate we’ve gained a reliable new one.” He turned his gaze back to the two younger agents. “A good partner is hard to find.”
Dulmur looked back at him. “Mm-hm.”
He pondered the group of his fellow agents for a while, then sighed. “Too bad we can’t tell them the whole story of what we did while they were out of the universe.”
“You know why we can’t.”
“I know.” They hadn’t even told Andos about the temporal defense grid. It was imperative that no one in the twenty-fourth century find out about it, that no record be made, and not just for the usual reasons of temporal security. Andos knew they were keeping something from her—even Lucsly wasn’t stony-faced enough to pull one over on a Rhaandarite—but the director understood the need-to-know regulations better than they did.
“We shouldn’t even talk to each other about it,” Lucsly went on.
“I know.”
“We should try to forget we ever heard of it.”
“I know, I know.” After peering at him a bit longer, Lucsly nodded and let it go.
Dulmur sighed. “Coffee?” he asked after a moment.
Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations - 01 - Watching the Clock Page 40