“I see them too, but I don’t know what I’m seeing,” Prynn said.
“See what?”
“Shax nests,” Thia said. “You must have disturbed a shax colony when you crashed into the rock face. That’s where they live. Some of them obviously found the exposed areas of your skin.”
“Is this—” Phillipa slapped at her neck where the prickling continued. “—something I should worry about?” Peeling down the top of her expedition suit, she looked at her arms and chest, discovering that her skin had erupted in swollen welts.
“Only if we didn’t have a medical kit,” Thia said, taking Phillipa’s backpack from her. Kneeling down, she unfastened the flap, and Phillipa watched her fishing around. “The shax prefer to nest just inside the epidermis of their host to lay their eggs; their saliva is toxic. One shax won’t hurt you, but a massive infestation could make you…” Her voice failed.
“What is it?” Phillipa asked. She could sense the zhen’s apprehension. Imagining her skin crawling with insects, she shook her arms and hands, swiped at her limbs. The gushing hot sensation increased and she felt blurry, disoriented.
Thia sat back on her legs, took a deep breath. “The medkit was smashed when you crashed into the rock face. I can’t generate the serum.”
“Can you repair it?” Phillipa asked, louder than she intended, and the sound of her own voice reverberated painfully in her head.
Shar examined the damage to the kit, issued his verdict: “No. Not quickly enough, and not with the tools we have. We’ll have to abort. I’m calling for an extraction.” Before Phillipa could protest, Shar touched his combadge and attempted to contact the aquacraft offshore.
Shar’s image swam before Phillipa’s eyes as he moved. The bright, red-tinged sharpness of delirium was setting in, exaggerating all sensation. Swaying forward, Phillipa nearly collapsed. Prynn caught her, eased her to a sitting position.
“—pattern scramblers must be proof against comm signals as well,” she heard Shar saying. “I can’t get through, and I have no idea how far we’d have to travel to move out of their range.”
Thia snapped into action, turned to Shar and Prynn. “I need one of you to find a plant for me. Look on the underside of any outcropping of rocks for small clusters—it would look furry, mosslike—with little yellow and white flowers growing on the top. I need as many handfuls of it as you can locate.”
“I’ll do it,” Shar said. “Is it Shanchen’s mantle?”
“Yes,” Thia said. “Prynn, we’ll need hot water, at least two liters. I’ll also need a sharp, narrow piece of metal. Several if you can manage. The points will need to be made quite hot.”
“I could slice up one of the karabiners,” Prynn suggested.
“Do it.”
To Phillipa, she said, “Take off your suit. I need to be able to see every welt.”
Drops of sweat became rivulets drizzling down her face. “Tell me—tell me honestly what’s going to happen,” she said, her tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth.
“Very shortly, you’re going to feel pain throughout your body—as if someone were skinning you. If the poison progresses, you might experience some paralysis.”
“And then?” She coughed.
“If I can’t devise a poultice for you, you’ll develop a high fever, the poison will break down the clotting factor in your blood, and you’ll hemorrhage.”
Mireh and Arios and Sibias flashed before her eyes. Their faces blurred, then dissolved as she passed out.
Prynn ripped open an emergency blanket, giving Phillipa a clean place to lie down. Together, Prynn and Thia undressed her, whereupon Thia unwound her turban and used it to cover Phillipa’s fevering body. Prynn gathered together a pile of large rocks nearby, set a couple of open canteens among them, and then fired her phaser at the stones until they glowed red hot. The water quickly came to a boil. Prynn then went to work using her phaser to slice a karabiner into sharp narrow rods.
Shar returned with the plants. Thia confirmed they were the correct variety and added them to the water. Several ointments and analgesics from the remains of the medkit would augment the treatment. Once the plants had cooked together, the poultice would be applied to all the affected areas; Phillipa would have to ingest whatever remained. Thia readily admitted she didn’t know how well her folk medicine would work, especially on a human.
Prynn quickly figured out what Thia intended to do with the metal pieces. Red welts indicated a midstage nest; the pustules indicated eggs about to hatch. A red-hot poker held over a welt would force the nesting shax out of the skin. The same poker pressed into a pustule would destroy the eggs before they hatched.
The first time she singed a pustule with the heated karabiner end, Prynn felt Phillipa’s involuntary flinch; the smoke from the burning skin permeated her nose and eyes and throat and she wanted to vomit. A brief glance at Thia revealed the zhen felt similarly. They pressed on, working to stem the infestation. Dark red-purple capillary nets appeared on the surface of Phillipa’s skin, indicating that the poison had already spread into her bloodstream at those places. Soon, Phillipa’s torso was covered with oozing, black burns.
At last, when the plant concoction was ready, Prynn used her phaser to slice off the tops of the canteens. Shar peeled off his expedition suit to the waist and stripped off his tanktop, which he ripped into strips and tossed the pieces into the solution to soak. He then applied the makeshift bandages to Phillipa’s legs. Prynn and Thia wrapped her upper body. Once her exposed skin had been covered, Thia scooped the limp, shriveled leaves and flowers out of canteens and smeared them over the bandages.
After making Phillipa as comfortable as possible, the team seemed to be at a loss about how to proceed. “What do we do now?” Prynn said, running the tricorder over Phillipa’s body. For now, her vitals had stabilized.
Thia sighed. “I think she’s out of danger, but Phillipa needs to rest and heal. Fortunately, coming up to this plateau saved us time—we can afford to wait a while. We’ll have to start off for the lava cave by second moonrise—sometime in the next couple of hours. At that point, we’ll have to decide whether to abort the mission or split up.” She shifted from side to side, twitching. Twisting her arm behind her, she scratched at her back.
“Thia,” Prynn said, worried. “Your back…”
“It isn’t shax,” Thia assured her. “Since I started weaning my thei, my kheth is drying up more quickly than is comfortable. The sensation is—itchy. I will be fine.”
Shar fidgeted. He looked uncomfortable. Prynn looked from Thia to Shar. Neither one seemed prepared to say more. She sensed subtext, but she wasn’t Phillipa: reading people, especially Andorians who did their damnedest not to be read, wasn’t her gift. I’m too worn out to ask. She slapped her thighs. “Well then, I’m going to try to freshen up.”
“There’s a little stream a few dozen meters from here,” Shar said without making eye contact, nodding in the direction he’d gone to search for Shanchen’s mantle.
“That’ll do.” She picked her way around the brush and the rocks. She could hear the water when she realized she’d forgotten her pack with all her hygiene supplies, so she turned around.
The low murmur of talk alerted her to activity. Not wanting to disturb them, she approached slowly. Her pack was propped against a prickly shrub. Reaching for it from behind, she stole a glance—
Heart racing in her chest, she hastened toward the stream. She would have run all the way back to DS9 if she could have.
“I am uncertain as to the propriety of this situation, Thirishar,” Thia said, lying prone on the ground. She pillowed her head on her forearms.
I am equally uncertain, but such as it is, we do what we must, Shar thought. “I suspect you would not feel comfortable asking Prynn to help you in this way.” Pushing up the fabric of her undergarment, he exposed Thia’s lower back, feeling both intrigued and repelled by the crusting, scabbing lines of the kheth that wrapped her lower torso. Studying s
exual anatomy and physiology, learning the processes of pleasuring a partner, of creating and delivering a child—none of these things had prepared him for the reality of a zhavey’s body so soon after birth: her back mottled in purple pigmentation, the coagulated blood and kheth gel, the weeping gash, dark blue with irritation. His hand hovered over her back, uncertain as to whether he should touch her.
“You are uncomfortable. I know this forces intimacy between us that is not to be shared outside the bond.” Thia pushed down her undershirt, turned on her side, and started to sit up before Shar gently pressed on her shoulder.
“No. I will help.”
He poured a handful of fruity oil into his palm; he drizzled it onto her wound and the surrounding area. Pressing his fingertips into her skin, he rubbed the oil into the dry patches, feeling the roughness yielding to his ministrations. He felt Thia relax. Her breath assumed an easy rhythm, and he focused on making her comfortable.
“Though I do not regret allowing you to ease my discomfort, I feel…I feel that I have cheated you of the chance to share this first with a bond of your own.”
Shar swallowed hard. “I have yielded my position in my bondgroup to another.”
“I know you have lost Shathrissía, but why separate yourself from the chance to experience such joy with those you love?”
He sat in silence, poured more oil onto her back, kneaded it into her skin.
“I know that we see things differently, Thirishar. But do not punish yourself for Shathrissía’s choice. Do not deny yourself your birthright—the greatest blessing of your existence: the shelthreth. There is nothing you can experience more majestic than when the four become Whole.”
She was remembering, he could sense it, and he felt possessed with a longing to make those kinds of memories for himself, though he couldn’t imagine how.
Abruptly, Thia rolled onto her back and pushed up into a sitting position. Her eyes were gray-green; he hadn’t noticed before.
For a long moment, she studied his face, though Shar turned away from her scrutiny, still hiding, still protecting himself.
Thia reached for him, curled her hand gently around his chin and pulled his face back around so they were once again face-to-face. He felt her compassion, the comfort she offered. In turn, he released the sorrow, the fears that had been tormenting him for too long. He yielded as she enveloped him in her arms. Lying back onto the ground, she pulled him down onto her so his face rested in the V beneath her ribs, close to her heart. As she stroked his hair, curling her fingers in his locks, she whispered the soft chantings of his childhood.
He wet her skin with his tears.
Prynn waded into the gurgling stream, her discarded expedition suit folded neatly on a rock. The stench from Thia’s treatment of Phillipa’s wounds lingered in her nose. Nothing could purge it from Prynn’s senses—the crackling hiss of burning flesh, the arch of Phillipa’s back as she bucked from pain—and Thia had alternately held Phillipa’s hand and burned out the shax through it all. As it was, Prynn couldn’t summon the will to eat her dinner rations. She knew her body needed nourishment. Knowing what needed to be done and acting on that knowledge were two entirely different things.
Phillipa’s going to be all right, she reminded herself. She clung to the thought like a lifeline.
In the moonlight, the white-pink coral sands glowed like the underbelly of a seashell. How pristine the scene appeared with the furry foliage of the unfamiliar bushes, the occasional fist-sized arachnid scurrying into the brush. Under better circumstances, this might be romantic. Instead, she’d taken refuge alone, behind a giant limestone boulder, stripped down to her skin, pretending that the person whose attention she craved most would be sneaking up to surprise her at any moment. He wouldn’t be. She wasn’t stupid. Idealistic, yes, but stupid, no.
Fact: Only yesterday, Shar had shown inklings of romantic interest in her. He might be an Andorian chan, but he was male enough that she knew the signs. At least that’s what she’d believed at the time. Most of her recollections from the festival were murky, but undoubtedly, something had passed between them. Otherwise, why would he be treating her like she had the Marbagonian plague? Near the end, some of his response had been the saf—she granted that. But before the saf, she’d seen the looks, enjoyed the casual brushing up against her, felt the chemistry—because it was mutual! And except for that one moment of connection when she’d admitted her skepticism toward the Andorian way, he’d hardly made eye contact with her since they set out on this mission.
Initially, she thought he might be ignoring her out of embarrassment (which she shared) and/or guilt (which she understood). Seeing him with Thia modified her opinion somewhat.
Here, in solitude, she could indulge her jealousy. Biting down hard on her lip, she closed her eyes and replayed the scene in her mind. Thia had been facedown on the sand, arms flung above her head. Shar, oil bottle in hand, had poured some into his palm and began massaging her lower back where the kheth grew out of her spine. All right, having spent the last couple of days weaning her thei, her pouch was drying up, and the skin itched—she understood that. But couldn’t the mated zhavey put the damn oil on without Shar’s help? Or asked Prynn to do it?
Maybe not. Maybe Thia wouldn’t ask her. Prynn wasn’t Andorian. And maybe that’s what this all came down to—the fact that Shar was her friend and Thia had made her feel like the outsider.
Prynn sighed.
Scooping up a handful of water with her hand, she poured it over her shoulders, relishing the sensation of the rivulets. She closed her eyes, welcoming the chill brought on by the night breeze brushing her wet skin. The second moon would rise soon enough. For now, she savored these few stolen moments of peace.
Pausing first to listen for aural clues as to Shar and Thia’s status, Prynn cleared her throat as she approached their makeshift camp. She had no idea if the massage was an ongoing thing and she didn’t want to intrude. Andorians might not have personal-space issues, but humans did and Prynn couldn’t fully bypass her cultural programming. In spite of many summers spent on the Mediterranean rivieras where casual attitudes about nudity and sunbathing abounded, Prynn felt differently about seeing people she knew in “exposed” situations.
“So…” she said, her eyes sweeping up the trajectory of the second moon, over thousands of stars, brilliant and clear, and back down to earth. Taking a deep breath, she stepped into camp, if one could call a few backpacks and prostrate bodies “camp.”
Thia tended to Phillipa, mopping her graying face with a ripped shred of cloth. She nodded to Prynn in greeting, but continued working. A study in calm, Shar sat propped against a boulder, intently studying his tricorder.
“Have we made any decisions?” she asked.
“Phillipa is in no shape to travel,” Shar said, reattaching his tricorder to his hip. “Her vitals have improved, but her body will need to eliminate the poisons before she has the strength to move.”
“I will stay behind,” Thia said firmly.
“But you know where the lava tube is. You have more understanding of what we might expect,” Shar argued. “You can negotiate with your bondmates.”
“Once you descend from the plateau, the route is straightforward. The pathway is part of an archeological ruin—a temple. Traveling under cover of darkness protects you. Because of the radiological interference, my bondmates’ ability to use sensors is just as restricted as yours.” Thia eased Phillipa onto her side, peeled back her bandages, and studied her wounds. “Phillipa needs me far more than you do.”
With obvious reluctance, Shar agreed with Thia and started assembling his pack.
Prynn guzzled water from her spare canteen, then nibbled on a ration bar. With little sleep, she would need the extra energy.
“Shar.” Thia said. “Please…” Her voice trailed off. “My bondmates. Spare them if you can.”
Shar flexed his palm, pressed it to Thia’s; their eyes met. “I promise.”
“Wait.” Rea
ching beneath the neck of her expedition suit, Thia pulled out her betrothal shapla, pulled it over her head, and handed it to Shar. “Use this to prove that I travel with you. It may save you both—and your zhavey.”
“Thank you,” Shar said, bowing his head.
“Thank you,” Thia said.
Something has changed, Prynn thought, unable to pinpoint exactly when the change had come, for all of us. A barrier had fallen. Maybe it was as simple as trust growing between all three of them. And for the first time since she’d left the keep—hell, for the first time since they left Orbital Control—her anxiety lessened. An instinct deep inside her reassured her that all was as it should be. Prynn felt amazed by the confluence of life-changing realities binding her to Shar, Shar to Thia, Thia to Phillipa. One broken link…
None of us will break, she vowed. “Let’s get with it, Shar,” she said. “Your mother’s waiting.” A thought occurred. Time to be mature. “And Thia?”
The zhen looked up from her ministrations.
Prynn walked over to where she worked and extended her flattened palm.
Wide-eyed, Thia raised her hand slowly, gingerly touching her hand to Prynn’s. Their eyes met. She offered the zhen a slight smile. Thia bowed her head.
They stayed connected for a long moment before Prynn broke away.
Moving soundlessly across the flats, Prynn and Shar used the tricorder’s positioning system to guide them away from camp, out onto the open plateau. The second moon provided them with light to see by, but forced them into the shadows of the rock outcroppings to avoid detection. As far as Shar could see, the deserted, nearly barren plateau offered little to no shielding. Protecting Thia and Phillipa from the eyes of their enemies would be impossible after sunrise.
So we will be finished before sunrise.
Thankfully, Prynn was as nimble-footed as he was, her light, swift steps making quick work over the occasionally unstable sand pockets (rendered so by the rainstorm) and through the narrow clearings between low-growing brush and rock. They moved in tandem, one occasionally extending a hand to the other if the stones were slick or steep. When they reached the plateau’s edge, Shar discovered that they had missed the descent by a few hundred meters. Thia had warned them that the latent radiation in the geological formations interfered with sensors, and here was proof. He motioned Prynn beneath an overhang; he needed time to recalibrate his instrument to compensate for the interference.
Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine Page 33