by Peter David
“I’m not entirely certain what there is to talk ab—”
Kalinda started to reach toward her, moving in to kiss her as she had before, and Robin pulled back, putting her hand up to keep her away. “Lift, halt.” The turbolift obediently came to a stop.
Glancing around, Kalinda said, “Hoping to ensure privacy?” There was a faint teasing in her voice that sounded so familiar, so damned familiar…
“I cannot deal with this,” said Robin. “I just…I cannot. Deal. With it.”
“Do you find it so difficult to conceive—?”
“This isn’t about conceiving!” Robin said, her voice rising. “This isn’t about trying to figure out if you’re him, or whether you only think you’re him! Either you’re a disturbed young woman or a creature that’s neither alive or dead. But either way, you’re not my husband, and even if you were—”
“Even if I were? Even if—”
She drew back a hand and slapped Kalinda as hard as she could and all the fear, all the frustration, all the terror that she had been trying to deal with exploded out of her as she screamed, “How could you have let them kill you?!”
“Wh-what?” Kalinda stammered uncomprehendingly. “Let them? I didn’t let them! I—”
“You got outmaneuvered and outwitted by people who had a fraction of your cunning and resourcefulness, and you left me behind to clean up the mess, and…and you stupid—!” and she pounded on Kalinda’s chest as if she were thumping on Si Cwan’s, except, of course, Si Cwan would have been taller and his chest a good deal harder. Kalinda staggered back, clutching at her bosom, gasping for air and wincing in pain. “I’m a widow and a mother left with no father for her child, and it’s all your fault!”
“You’re not being rational,” said Kalinda, grimacing from the ache where Robin had punched her.
“I don’t feel like being rational. I feel like finding my son and trying to move forward with my life!”
“And I’m trying to help you.”
“With finding Cwansi, yes, I know. And if this…this flight of fancy, against all reason, is successful, then I’ll be grateful to you. But not so grateful that I’ll acknowledge you as my husband. Because either I would be taking advantage of a deluded young woman or a dead man. Either way it’s way out of the range of anything I feel comfortable with. Do you understand?”
Kalinda had stopped rubbing where Robin had struck her. She sighed heavily. “Yes. Of course I understand. I just—” She cleared her throat. “You have no idea what it was like, Robin. The loneliness, the emptiness. The feeling of being here and yet not. My love for you, for our son, for Kally…my determination to see things through…it all held me here. I—”
“I can’t listen to this. Lift, resume movement.”
“All right, Robin,” came Morgan’s voice, and the turbolift promptly began to move once more.
Robin sagged against the side of the lift and closed her eyes in pain. “The two of you. You’re going to drive me insane. The omniscient, all-seeing mother and the dead husband in my sister-in-law’s body. This isn’t a life. It’s insanity.”
“Then I shall do whatever is within my power,” said Kalinda softly, “to mute the insanity. My apologies for making things difficult for you, Robin. Believe of me what you will, but I ask only that you believe this absolutely: I would not hurt you for all the world.”
The doors slid open and Kalinda exited, quickly, noiselessly as a ghost.
iii.
Soleta knew there was every reason that she should remain confined to her quarters, as Calhoun had made clear was to be the case. Despite all that she had once meant to the Excalibur, the circumstances—especially considering the involvement of her vessel and her partner in the disappearance of Cwansi—required that some degree of security-oriented decorum be observed. Calhoun had stopped short of putting her in the brig, or even posting a guard outside her quarters. “The honor system,” was what he had said to her, willing to take her on her word that she would stay put.
It was not a hard promise for Soleta to keep. What was hard was for her to walk the corridors of the ship she had called home. She suspected that Robin Lefler felt much the same way, but then again, the circumstances were quite different. Robin had departed Starfleet with her chin held high, embarking on a grand adventure of love. Soleta had practically been called a traitor, simply because she had been less than candid about the nature of her birth, as if she had any control over such a thing. The various former crewmates whom she had encountered hadn’t seemed to know how to address her, particularly attired as she was in Romulan garb. Despite the current thawing of relations with the Romulans, there was still no love lost, and much suspicion, between the two races.
In the end, it was better that she remained in her quarters until such time—presuming it ever came—that she could somehow serve the Excalibur’s needs.
Then she heard the sound of footsteps just outside the door. “Come,” she called.
The doors slid open and she was mildly surprised to see Robin Lefler standing there. “Sorry,” Robin said. “I was just—I didn’t realize that you’d hear me. Which, I suppose, was foolish of me, considering the…” and she touched her own ears.
“Think nothing of it,” said Soleta mildly. “You need not be hesitant in coming to see me.”
“Yes, well, I just—” She remained in the doorway, not entering. “It occurred to me that I hadn’t been by to thank you for trying to prevent Selar from taking Cwansi. And I’m very sorry that you were harassed for it, and arrested and, well—”
“Think nothing of it.”
“Except I do think of it,” said Robin sadly. “I think of the old days when we served together, and how the galaxy seemed so full of possibilities.”
“It’s still full of possibilities, Robin. It’s just that, the older you get, the less attractive many of them become.”
“I suppose so. Anyway, again—thank you for the help, and sorry about the inconvenience.”
“You are welcome.”
They remained there looking at each other for a time, until Soleta said, “Do you wish to come in and talk for a while?”
“Desperately,” said Robin.
And she did, and they did.
iv.
Xy had lost track of how long he had been sitting in sickbay. He had been in the quarantine section—now vacant except for him—and currently in the chair that his mother had occupied for so long. He looked up, though, when he heard a throat loudly being cleared in what was a transparently obvious attempt to get his attention.
Mackenzie Calhoun was peering in through the door. He smiled politely. “Is it safe for me to come in?” he said with mock concern.
“You mean is there a possibility you’ll catch something? Not unless being depressed is contagious.”
“I hear it can be, but I’ll take my chances.” He walked into the quarantine section and stood in front of Xy, his arms folded. “So what are you doing down here, Lieutenant?”
“Filling in for my mother as needed.”
“This isn’t your shift.”
“I subsist on far less sleep than is required by most. An hour or two at most. I can afford to—”
“What I can’t afford,” Calhoun interrupted him, kindly but firmly, “is to have a science officer who’s so eaten up by guilt that he’s letting it distract him from what needs to be done.”
“What makes you think I’m being eaten up by guilt, Captain?”
“Because in so many ways, you are your father’s son, and I’ve spent the last hour in my ready room talking hir down off the ceiling.”
Xy frowned. “S/he’s on the ceiling? Why is s/he—?”
“It’s vernacular. Ever since this happened, s/he’s been spending every waking hour second-guessing how s/he should have handled hir relationship with your mother. S/he keeps trying to figure out how s/he could have seen all of this coming. Maybe averted it.”
“There’s no way s/he could have—”
“That’s what I’ve been saying, and I think I’ve got hir about eighty percent believing it. I’m hoping to get to at least ninety percent with you.”
Xy looked down, abashed. “Our situations—my father’s and mine—are a little different, as are our perspectives.”
“Not all that different. You’re both trying to dissect the past, to figure out how you could have changed it.”
“Respectfully, Captain, that’s not what I’m doing at all. I am neither dissecting nor second-guessing. I am merely wallowing in guilt.”
Despite the gravity with which Xy had spoken, Calhoun chuckled, low in his throat. “Well, I have to admire someone who knows himself quite that thoroughly. What do you have to feel guilty about? The circumstances of your birth?”
“More the nature of my physiological makeup.”
“You were dealt a bad hand, Xy. No sense in blaming yourself for that.”
“Well, my father was the dealer. Is there any sense in hir blaming hirself?”
“Not really. At least that’s what I’ve been trying to tell hir.”
“Then where do we place the blame? On my mother?”
“Well,” said Calhoun, “she is the one responsible.”
“Except she’s not,” said Xy firmly. “She was fine before all this happened. Before I happened. If it were not for me, and for my condition, then she would be right here, on the ship, serving her fellow crew members. She wouldn’t have run off. She wouldn’t have taken the infant. She did it for me, Captain. All for me.”
“You don’t know that. Why would you think that?”
“I’ve been studying her medical logs. Her journals. Reading between the lines. I think,” he said indicating the table where Rulan had been lying, “I think she believed that Rulan somehow held a promise of a cure for me. That there was something about hir that could be applied to my condition and save me.”
“But how does the baby tie into this?”
“I don’t know,” Xy admitted. “Perhaps because he’s a half-breed, like me. I haven’t figured that part out yet. Nevertheless, they are linked. I’m certain of it.”
“Whatever it is, it will be revealed in the due course of time,” said Calhoun. “Most things are. In the meantime, stop blaming yourself for your genetic makeup. None of us has any control over how we come to be here, and we have only limited control of how we ultimately depart. There are, however, far too many things we do have control over, and must answer for, to be wasting time on the things that are simply beyond our abilities to affect.”
“You’re saying I should get over it.”
“More or less.”
“Is that an order, Captain?”
“More of a suggestion.”
v.
They are running through the corridors of a ship. It is hard to determine what ship it is. She reaches out and yes, there…the Trident. It is the Trident under attack, from thunderous beings in cobalt-blue armor, and they are wreaking havoc and destruction wherever they walk, and one of them is walking right toward her, stretching out his hand, and it is glowing, blinding, and the force is being unleashed and she feels her body frying…
Tania Tobias awoke with a startled cry. She sat up in bed, in the darkness, breathing heavily. “The Trident,” she whispered.
A voice next to her in the darkness said groggily, “What?”
“The Trident is in trouble. It’s under attack. Some sort of…of armored beings. The crew members are fighting, running, dying…”
“Well, then you’ve got to tell someone. Tell the captain.”
Tobias shook her head firmly. “No. No, I can’t. I don’t want him to—”
“To what? Know what you can do?”
“I want to be normal.”
“Tania—”
“I want to be normal!” and then she dropped her voice to a whisper, as if worried someone might overhear. “You don’t understand. I was the Starfleet washout. The one who was too unstable to be trusted. I am not going to have ‘occasionally has visions’ added to my Starfleet docket. I just am not going to. We should be arriving at the planet in,” she said, checking her chronometer, “three hours. I have no idea if what I saw actually happened, or is happening, or will happen, or maybe never happen. That does occur, you know. That I see something that I could swear is genuine and it never transpires.”
“Not to your knowledge, anyway.”
“I pray the <>Trident is all right, and if it isn’t, there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it until we get there. I’m due back on duty soon. In fact, I should get up.”
“Tania.” Tania felt a warm hand upon her shoulder. “I wasn’t expecting this to happen. I—”
“Wanted to feel less lonely. I totally understand.” She leaned over, drew Kalinda to her and kissed her gently. “We live in strange times.”
“Everyone always does. There’s no such thing as normal. Just different degrees of abnormality.”
“I’ve heard that.” She rolled out of bed, leaving Kalinda to roll back over and drift back to sleep in a haze of warmth.
?
Selar did not remember lapsing into unconsciousness or falling asleep. She realized with a distant surprise that she didn’t remember anything after the image of her son had presented itself to her in the brig of the Spectre. One moment she had been looking at that smiling visage that was so much like Xy’s, and the next moment, she wasn’t.
She slowly opened her eyes. Rulan was looking at her.
Instantly Selar sat up so quickly that she could have sworn her brain rebounded within her cranium. “Oh, I should not have done that,” she said, touching her fingers to her temples. “That was ill-advised.”
Rulan leaned forward, regarding Selar with open curiosity. “Who are you?”
“I—” How best to summarize it? “I am your doctor.”
“Oh.” Rulan clearly didn’t comprehend, and at that moment, Selar did not remotely care.
Instead she was looking around the room that they were now in.
The first thing that she did was to listen carefully. It took her mere moments to discern that they were no longer aboard the Spectre. Any space-faring vessels made constant little noises as they moved. Ambient noise, none of it particularly distracting individually, collectively gave one a sense of the environment. She heard none of that now, so she was convinced they had not been relocated to some small room in the ship that she had not seen earlier.
Instead what she heard was a rushing of air, a very distant howling. It was hard to perceive because the walls of the room were extremely thick. But with her hearing, she was able to do so. There was no doubt in her mind that she was on a planet’s surface. They could be anywhere, but given the circumstances, the likelihood was that they were on AF1963.
Fully expecting the door to be locked, or—at the very least—that there would be guards making sure they weren’t going anywhere, she got to her feet and moved to the door. She winced, feeling a stabbing pain in her chest. She touched herself tentatively and ascertained a rib had been broken. That didn’t surprise her. Considering the pounding she had taken, she was fortunate to be walking at all. She made her way to the door and placed her hand against it. It felt cold to the touch. Rather than sliding, it had a large handle on it. She pulled on it experimentally. The door swung open slightly.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Rulan.
Feeling it would be best to decide for herself what she should and should not do, Selar pulled the door wide.
A blast of frigid air slammed into her. She felt as if a thousand needles were stinging her face, and she instantly went numb. Quickly she shoved the door closed, pushing it as hard as she could with her shoulder. Her broken rib ached terribly and it was all she could do not to cry out in pain. She tried to take a deep breath to focus, and inhaled air so cold that she was certain her lungs were going to freeze up and shatter in her chest.
Rulan came to her side and pushed along with her. Within
moments, as if staggering uphill, they managed to get the door closed once more. She leaned against the door, giving the pain time to subside, while Rulan said laconically, “I see you’re not someone who takes advice easily.”
That much was true, but she didn’t appreciate hearing it from hir. It was obvious to Selar that the beings who had boarded the ship must have brought them here. She had no idea why they would do so, or what they wanted with her and Rulan…
Rulan, who had been lying unconscious, was now standing there, awake and alert and obviously ready to respond to any questions she might have.
“How long have you been conscious?” she said.
“I have no idea. I don’t exactly have any means of keeping time. A while, I guess.”
“I mean, did you wake up here?”
S/he nodded. “Yes. I came around and saw you lying there. I tried to awaken you, but you weren’t responding. So I figured that you would come around when you were ready to.”
“A reasonable assumption.”
“How did you become my doctor? I’ve never seen you before.” S/he looked her up and down. “You’re wearing a Starfleet uniform. How did I wind up getting a Starfleet doctor?”
“It would help me to answer your question if you answered mine: How did you come to be in the vessel where we found you?”
“Vessel? What vessel?”
“You were discovered by the Starship Excalibur, floating in a small derelict ship in a remote region of space. Are you claiming that was not your ship?”
“No! I’ve never owned a ship in my life. I—” Then s/he stopped. “Oh my gods.”
“What?”
“I…I thought I was dreaming. Dreaming that I was on a ship. That I was dying in it, but it all happened so quickly, and it felt so surreal. I didn’t think it was real.”
“Believe me, it was. Tell me your last memories before you were discovered in the vessel.”
“That was real? Are you sure? Is it possible it might have been a dream?”