by Peter David
The hour grew later and later, and finally Sulu said, "Demora … I really think it's time for bed. I showed you where the guest bedroom is. . . ."
"That's because I'm a guest?"
He looked from Demora to Chekov and back again. Clearing his throat, he said, "That's … just what I'm in the habit of calling it, that's all."
"It's early for me still."
"Well, I think it's time you went to bed."
She squared her shoulders and said, "Mother lets me st …"
And then she caught herself, speaking of her mother in the present tense. It was a slip that had a very visible effect on her, and she looked downcast. It was the first time since he'd met her that he'd seen anything from her acknowledging her loss. She certainly pulled herself together quickly, however, as she said, "All right. Good night then." She turned and walked briskly away toward the rear of the apartment, and Sulu had the feeling—probably legitimate—that the reason she retreated so quickly was because she didn't want him to see her cry.
Chekov leaned over and said to Sulu in a low voice, "She's a great kid, isn't she?"
"Oh … fabulous," Sulu said. "So how do you suggest I handle this?"
"Vell—" Chekov gave it a moment's thought. "—you could try and talk Starfleet into letting you bring her along."
"You mean on the Bozeman? Against regs. Never happen." He looked down, drumming his fingers. "I'm … going to make arrangements."
"Vat kind? You'll leave her vith your family?"
"There are schools. I've done some checking. Boarding schools and such that will take care of the child year round. Educate her, feed her. That would be best, I think."
"Vile you're off exploring the galaxy," said Chekov.
"You make it sound trivial."
"I don't mean to," said Chekov. "And you know I don't feel that vay. I'm just saying …"
"What? What are you saying?"
He raised his eyes and studied his longtime friend. "I'm saying that here's a child who vill have lost her mother and never really gotten to know her father. And that's a lousy vay to grow up."
"Oh really. How do you know?"
"Because that's how I grew up."
Sulu said nothing for a moment, then went back to tapping his fingers on the coffee table in front of them. "You turned out okay," he said after a time.
"Perhaps. But maybe I could have turned out better. I'll never know."
"And if I leave her, she'll never know. Is that what you're saying?" Sulu rose, looking down at Chekov. "What are you telling me, Pav? That I should quit? Turn down the first-officer position? Walk away from the thing I know most about in the galaxy so that I can try being a father to an instant family, something about which I assure you I know absolutely nothing? Chekov … it's crazy. It wouldn't do her any good, and it certainly wouldn't do me any good."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure!"
"Then I suppose there's nothing more to say."
"Apparently not."
Sulu sat back down. It had never seemed so quiet in the apartment before. It was as if the absence of noise had become an entity unto itself.
"It's just ironic, that's all," Chekov finally said.
"What is?"
"Vell … years ago, you were telling me how life on Earth couldn't be exciting. How there was no adventure. And then you were pulled into the entire business vit Ling Sui, and you thought you had found adventure. But that was only a few days. There is no greater adventure than raising a child."
"You're speaking from experience, I gather," he said sarcastically.
"I vish. Just gut instinct. The same instinct that tells me leaving her behind couldn't be right."
"Maybe you'd feel differently if the situations were reversed."
"Maybe," agreed Chekov. "But … they're not. And so I don't."
"What do you want from me, Chekov?" Sulu said in exasperation. "What do you expect me to do? Have some sudden burst of paternal affection that I never had before? Look at this child who is, to all intents and purposes, a stranger to me, and feel so protective of her that I reorder my life around her? Chekov, I … I have responsibilities …"
"Yes. You do," said Chekov sharply. "And vun of them is in the 'guest bedroom' right now. So the only question is: Vat are you going to do about it?"
"I'm going to do right by her," Sulu said. "It just may be that you and I have different definitions of what's right."
"Actually," Chekov replied, "I don't think ve do. Ve simply von't both admit to it, that's all."
Chapter Seventeen
SULU AND DEMORA spent the next day walking around San Francisco. Demora was quiet much of the time as he pointed out landmarks to her. She seemed politely interested at most.
He stopped outside one building, pointed, and said, "This is where I grew up."
She cast a quick glance at it. "Your family still live here?" she asked.
He shook his head. "My mother moved to New Tokyo to take care of her sister. The rest of my family … they're all going on with their lives in other places." He sighed. "Once upon a time, families lived together in the same house for generations. But it's … not like that anymore. It hasn't been for a long, long time. There's too many opportunities out there. Too many directions for people to go."
"And no one wants to be anchored with children."
He stopped and looked down at her. Realizing that candy-coating the truth was going to be a waste of time with this child, he said bluntly, "So … how much of my conversation with Chekov did you overhear last night?"
"All of it," she said in that matter-of-fact tone of hers.
"And how do you feel about it?"
She shrugged. She had a very expressive shrug.
"That's it? Just," and he shrugged back.
"Mother brought me with her wherever she went because that's what she felt she had to do to be a good mother. You feel you have to dump me in a school because that's how you'll be a good father. Everyone does what they have to do. One way or another makes no difference to me."
He studied her, trying to see if she was being sarcastic. If she was trying to cover up some sort of deep hurt. But her face was as inscrutable as …
… as his could be.
"You're being very grown-up," he said.
She raised an eyebrow ever so slightly. "Someone has to be," she replied.
The school that Sulu had in mind was in Washington state, just outside Seattle. Called the Winchester School, it was one of several schools highly recommended to Starfleet personnel who were in similar straits as Sulu (not identical, of course; Sulu's circumstances were rather unusual, even for Starfleet).
They walked around the grounds for a time, visited the dorms, spoke with the teachers. At all times Demora was polite, quiet, respectful.
It made Sulu extremely nervous.
He had long ago learned to trust his gut instinct. For instance, when encountering another ship, he simply knew when there was going to be trouble. Before the other ship would put up their shields, before any alerts were sounded … Sulu just had a feeling.
He had that feeling now. Her shields had been raised. He wasn't sure what her weapons were, but he dreaded having them fired in his direction.
"Do you like it?" he asked as they stood in the dorm.
She nodded. That was all. Just nodded.
She nodded in the classrooms. She nodded in the library. She nodded in the grassy center square. She nodded so much that Sulu thought her head was going to fall off.
On the flight home, he said to her, "I think you don't like it."
She sighed in exasperation. "I said I did."
"I think you may just be saying what I want to hear."
She looked up at him icily. "How do I know what you want to hear? I hardly know you."
And it's not like you're giving me the chance. She didn't say it in so many words, but he was positive that's what was going through her mind. Either that or it was so strongly on his own mi
nd that he was superimposing it onto her.
"All right. Fair enough," he said. "What would you like to know about me?"
She gave it some consideration.
"Did you love my mother?" she asked.
He wasn't certain what he'd been expecting her to say. On the other hand, he realized, he shouldn't have been the least bit surprised.
But what was he supposed to say? The truth was that he had barely had any time with her mother. They'd had no time to build a relationship, to establish bonds of trust. To create all the things that went into a loving …
And then he thought about her. Thought about her smile … her laugh … her bravery, her grim humor … thought about what she had been to him, what she'd represented …
… thought about the press of their bodies against each other …
… thought about what she had given him.
And he smiled and said, "Demora … I think I loved your mother before I ever met her."
She looked at him slightly askance. "Does that mean yes?"
"It means yes." He hesitated and then said, "Did she love me?"
Again with the shrug. "I guess."
"Did she ever say?"
Demora laughed slightly. "She never even said she loved me. Mother wasn't much for talking; just doing. Are you like that?"
"In a way. Are you?"
"In a way. Besides," she added with that mature air of hers, "talking about love and everything … it's a waste of time, really."
"If it's a waste of time, why'd you bring it up?"
"I felt like wasting time, I guess. I mean, I'm here. You're here. Mother's gone. Love really doesn't much matter in the grand scheme of things, you know? Not in our situation."
"Our situation being—?"
"Well … it's like if a meteor is coming toward your planet. You can spend a lot of time wondering where the meteor came from. Maybe it was part of another planet that blew up, and then you wonder if there were people on that planet, and what were they like, and did they all die, and all that kind of stuff. But none of it really matters. The only thing that matters is that you have to do something about the meteor—blast it to pieces—because it's a threat to your planet."
"And I'm the planet, and you're the meteor. Is that what you're saying?"
She shrugged once more. Sulu's shoulders were starting to ache just watching her.
"Demora … the last thing I want to do is blast you to pieces."
"And what's the first thing you want to do with me?"
He shook his head in confusion. "What?"
She spoke utterly calmly, not appearing the least bit upset. "The first thing you'd want to do with me … is wish that I wasn't here. Because then you could go on with your life."
"That's not true."
She looked away.
He put a hand on her shoulder but she pushed it away. "That's not true," he said again.
And with a set jaw and steady gaze she said, "You know it is."
Which, of course, he did.
She was to leave for the Winchester School in the morning. This way she'd have enough time to settle in there, and for Sulu to then board the next outbound transport to take him to the Bozeman.
She said nothing as she went off to bed; just nodded her head slightly as he told her that he'd see her bright and early in the morning. He thought he should say more, but decided that there was no reason to do so now. It would seem maudlin and pointless. Plenty of time for goodbyes later.
That night he dreamt of Susan. Or Ling Sui.
He'd dreamt of her before. Some nights aboard the Enterprise when sleep didn't come easily, she'd come to him. Rarely was it in the city of Demora, or in the Sahara. Instead they would be at Wrigley's Pleasure Planet together, or cruising the rings of Saturn, or in a jungle paradise. Occasionally moments of danger from their adventure would reappear in fragmented form. But no matter what the forum for their adventure, she was always smiling and loving and set for anything.
But not this time.
This time he was on the bridge of the Enterprise. He was seated in the command chair. There was no one else around, and the bridge seemed oddly distended, as if being viewed through a fish-eye lens.
He heard weeping from behind him, a soul in torment. It was echoing through the bridge. He spun in his chair and faced the turbolift.
It sat open. Standing in the lift was Ling Sui. She said nothing, did nothing. She just stood there, with tears flowing down her cheeks, her chest heaving slightly in time to the sobs. Sulu got up from his chair and the turbolift doors slid shut. He crossed to the lift quickly, stepping over a tribble, and walked up to the doors. They didn't open. The crying continued. He jammed his fingers in and worked on prying them wide. They slid open with a low moan rather than their customary hiss.
The turbolift was empty.
The crying continued.
He stepped into the turbolift, trying to find where Ling had vanished to. The doors slid shut, and the turbolift began to move straight down.
It began to accelerate, faster and faster, and still he heard the crying. Except it no longer sounded like that of a grown woman. It had escalated in pitch and now seemed to Sulu like the sobbing of a child.
It was about at that time that he realized the turbolift was dropping faster than it should. Much faster. The floors were streaking past and Sulu suddenly knew that he was in free fall. There was absolutely no way in hell that the turbolift was going to slow down in time to prevent him from being a smear on the bottom of the shaft.
The sobbing was fading, becoming fainter and fainter, and Sulu braced himself for the impact. He wondered if, as they always say, his life would flash before his eyes. He waited and then it came, danced before him, so quick that it was little more than an eyeblink.
It was a child's face.
Sulu snapped awake.
He sat in his room, bare-chested, chest heaving, for quite a while. His hands were flat on his mattress as if trying to reassure him that he was on firm ground instead of being in danger that it would begin to plummet under him.
He checked his chronometer and was surprised to see that it was only 2 A.M. He was wide awake, completely rested … if one could call being jostled awake by a horrifying nightmare restful.
He wiped the sweat from his bow and slid his feet to the floor. Then he pulled his robe from his closet and wrapped it around himself.
He padded out into the hallway and walked the short distance to the guest bedroom. He paused a moment, listening for the sound of steady breathing. Then he slipped into the room.
Light from the hallway cascaded through, illuminating the lower half of her bed. She had wound the sheet around her, but even so he could see that she was curled up in a fetal position. The curve of her back was rising and falling erratically. Her head was a bit twisted around and didn't look squarely on the pillow. Somehow it all seemed very uncomfortable.
Sulu went to her and gently started to readjust her head onto the pillow. And as he did so, he felt the pillow's wetness. Very damp, as if …
She'd been crying into it.
Coincidental? Or had he heard it distantly in his sleep and it had worked its way into his dream? The latter seemed the more likely somehow.
Crying herself to sleep. Why? Because her mother was gone? Because her father was sending her away? Because she had no home, no place to call her own?
She'd put on a tremendous show of strength, a fabulous show. But there was no dissembling in sleep, no bravado to cover inner fears. There was just a sleeping child with the remnants of her anxiety still damp on the pillow.
"Shields down," he murmured. And he wasn't sure if he was referring to her or to himself.
He went back to his room, took one of the extra pillows on his bed and brought it back to her. Removing the sopping pillow, he substituted the dry one. He slid it under her head gently, then readjusted the blanket around her. Doing so required momentarily moving her hands.
One
of her small, delicate hands wrapped around two of his fingers and squeezed tightly.
He pulled gently, trying to disengage, but she wouldn't let go. She wasn't consciously aware of it at all …
Tenderly he wrapped the rest of his fingers around her hand, enveloping hers in his.
In her sleep, all unintending, she had launched her weaponry. It wasn't as devastating as a phaser, nor as destructive as a photon torpedo … but it cut far deeper and, in its way, was much more effective.
He stood there for some minutes, and saw that her uneven breathing had smoothed out. Her sleep was calm now. Whatever torments had been in her mind had apparently vanished, the strength of a father's hand enough to squeeze them into nothingness.
Once he was positive that she was sleeping soundly, he gently—ever so gently—disengaged his hand from hers. He watched her there some more, bathed in the light from the hallway, and then carefully backed out of the room, never taking his eyes from her.
He remained for a moment or two more, then went to the bay window in the living room. He stared up at the stars, thought about helming a starship through them.
Thought about standing at the side of a captain.
Thought about his own captaincy.
Thought about the Enterprise … about what he'd been working for all these years … about the mission … the credo …
Space, the final frontier …
How could he turn away from it? It would always be calling to him, pleading with him, scolding him like a spurned lover …
To explore strange new worlds …
Not to see planet after planet … tread on alien soil … wonder what new mystery was to unfold before his eyes …
To seek out new life …
And that was where he stopped.
New life.
A new life. And it was new. Six years old, good lord, that wasn't so much as an eyeblink in the history of the galaxy. Not even the beginning of a heartbeat in that endless body of time.
A new life, and he had not sought it out, it had sought him out.
A new life, and he was responsible for it.
Now … what the hell was he going to do about it?