Nran hesitated, looked to Norinda.
She shook her head with a smile. “Stay with me.”
With those three words, Nran was enthralled, and Picard knew the young man wouldn’t stray more than a few steps from Norinda for the duration of this visit.
“And I’ll stay with you,” Norinda said to Picard.
He nodded, already thinking of how he might arrange to be isolated on the bridge. Perhaps a decompression event?
“And you will stay with us,” Norinda told La Forge.
“This ship could lose power at any second,” La Forge said earnestly. “And if a propulsion system goes, we could drop out of orbit quick as that.” He snapped his fingers.
“If that should happen at this altitude, it won’t happen quickly. We’ll have more than enough time to return to my transport.” Norinda pointed ahead. “Considering what happened here yesterday, it is safer for us all to remain together. The bridge is that way.”
Picard thought it was most interesting that she knew the way. But then, he had also been surprised when she’d led them to the airlock chamber in which her transport was stored.
It was an Assessor’s vehicle, strictly limited to orbital flight and a passenger load no greater than nine. Yet Norinda had piloted it smoothly, and as far as Picard had been able to determine from his passenger seat, had not had to request clearance of any kind. He didn’t know if that was a sign of Assessor privilege, or a breakdown of Reman security. Then again, if all transgressions against the Romulan authorities were as strictly punished as Norinda had intimated, then perhaps strict oversight of Reman operations was not required.
With any luck, Picard tried to console himself, if an arrangement could be made to cooperate with the Tal Shiar, then perhaps the Federation could begin to have some influence in Reman affairs, and someday the Remans truly would be free.
The thought was a sobering one. After all that Shinzon—his clone—had gone through in an attempt to free his Reman brothers, it had come to the original Picard to try again.
Thinking about fate and destiny, Picard followed Norinda to the bridge.
In the aft of the bridge, in the office beyond the transparent wall, behind the desk, Kirk was sitting where he had sworn he would never sit, doing what he had sworn he would never do. But he had chosen a position of control, which might be necessary depending on the intent of the new boarding party.
Whoever they were, at least the holographic doctor had decided to remain hidden, still protecting Joseph. Kirk was ready for, and expected the worst. At any moment he would be faced with the prospect of battling a team of Romulan Assessors or Reman salvagers. Without weapons, the only advantage he had was McCoy.
Strapped in at the environmental and life-support duty station, McCoy was ready to switch off the artificial gravity, then hold on as Kirk pushed the ship into a series of spins guaranteed to have the boarding party bouncing off the walls. Wherever Joseph was hiding on this ship, Kirk hoped his son was tucked in tightly.
The turbolift began to operate.
Kirk’s gaze whipped to one of the many screens that faced his desk and found the right display. The car was rising to the bridge.
He waved through the transparent wall at McCoy.
McCoy waved back, standing by.
The lift doors opened.
Four figures were crowded inside.
Two were known to him—Picard, La Forge.
Kirk’s relief was momentary. The other two wore the dull gray uniforms of Romulan Assessors.
The young male he recognized as Nran and instantly dismissed him as a possible threat. The other, female, was—
The shock was overwhelming.
“Norinda…” he whispered in the silence of his sealed office.
Their encounter in the Mandylion Rift still baffled him—everything this woman was, everything she had done, no matter all the years that had since passed.
And to see her now, at a time when all of his life seemed to be measured by loss and longing, Kirk wondered if he could withstand her again.
But Norinda shared none of his apprehension. Her face was transformed by a welcoming smile—the terrible smile he’d feared and craved.
And with that smile, Kirk had his answer.
After what Mister Scott had reported about the state of the Calypso, Picard was surprised to find it in such relatively good condition. Even the air smelled fresher, as if the recirculators had been repaired. If he hadn’t known that Kirk and McCoy had just escaped from their Reman captors within the past few hours, he might have thought that Kirk had been aboard for days, toiling incessantly to bring the ship up to Starfleet standards.
Then Picard had stepped onto the bridge from the lift to see Kirk in the captain’s office, and was appalled by what he witnessed next.
The moment Kirk glimpsed Norinda, Picard saw the flash of recognition quickly turn to shock, and shock to horror.
Picard knew the reason and pitied Kirk.
With each step Norinda took toward that glass wall, she changed.
Her reflection in the glass wall showed her Assessor’s uniform shrinking round her, molding into a glossy black jumpsuit that was a second layer of skin, until…she became the image overlaying Kirk’s stricken face: Kirk’s love, his life, his greatest joy and deepest sorrow.
Teilani. Kirk’s lost wife, mother to his son. Cruelly returned to him.
Picard felt almost mesmerized as he saw Kirk press his hand against the clear wall.
As on the other side, Norinda/Teilani raised her hand to—
“Stop it!” McCoy shouted, startling Picard out of his near-trance state. The doctor stood on the lower level of the bridge. “For the love of God, man, make her stop!”
McCoy was right! Picard rushed at Norinda, grabbed her by the shoulder, pulled her away from the clear wall and the tortured man behind it.
“Change back!”
“Jean-Luc, you’re hurting me!” Teilani gazed up at Picard in hurt appeal, her beauty captured to the last frightening detail, from her delicate Klingon forehead ridges to the Romulan sweep of her ears. But she was younger than she had been when Picard had met her, with no trace of the virogen scar that had marked her later in life. Picard realized he was looking at Kirk’s idealized memory of his beloved wife, pulled from his mind, his heart, his soul.
“Let him go!” Picard commanded.
“I can’t,” the apparition said. “He loves me, and I must love him.” She held up her hands in supplication to Picard, and the black jumpsuit she wore, its plunging neckline reaching almost to her navel, began melting from her.
Picard forced himself to slap her, hard across her face. He winced. Siren she might be, but she still felt all too real.
She gasped, and for an instant, her face seemed to flicker into shadow. But then Teilani looked up at him again in defiance, and she snarled at him in Klingon, “I must love him!”
Picard seized hold of her again, determined to break whatever telepathic bond this alien creature had forged with Kirk. Remember she’s an alien shapeshifter, he told himself. He pictured her as the Reman female who had towered over him, with the strength to throw him across the bridge. He readied himself to strike again.
“Let her go or I’ll kill you!” It was Nran who shouted at him, sobbing.
Picard heard the scuffle that told him how La Forge was keeping the Romulan youth from interfering.
“Can’t you see what you’re doing to him, woman!” McCoy stomped up the steps to the upper level of the bridge.
But Teilani shook her head back and forth like a child having a tantrum. “No, no—he’s doing it to me!”
Picard raised his hand, then stopped hearing the whisper of the transparent wall opening, as Kirk emerged from his sealed office.
“No, Jean-Luc,” he said. “That’s not necessary…”
Picard stepped back and Teilani turned to face the man whose memories had somehow brought her into being.
Slowly she spread he
r arms wide to him.
“James,” she said, and her voice was Teilani’s. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Your name is Norinda,” Kirk said, his voice unsteady. “Not Teilani. Never Teilani.”
But Picard heard the last traces of uncertainty still in his voice. And so did she.
“But I am Teilani for you.” She stepped closer to him, within reach of his embrace, and Picard knew the struggle Kirk endured not to simply give in and hold her close once more.
“No,” Kirk told her, “you can’t be. Because I won’t let you.”
She touched his face, his tears.
“It’s what you want,” she said. “I know what you feel.”
Kirk nodded. “It’s what I wanted,” he agreed, and took her hand from his face, pushed it gently away. “But now there’s something else, someone else, I need even more.”
Pain, Picard thought suddenly. It was what had freed him and La Forge from Norinda’s influence. It was the one force stronger than love. And just like love, there were many forms of it. The pain of Teilani’s loss had at last freed Kirk, as well.
Teilani’s perfect skin became the drab gray cloth of an Assessor’s uniform once more. Then Norinda, as a Romulan, looked back at Picard, eyes dark with pain of her own.
“I understand none of you,” she said. “When all I offer is love, and peace, and understanding….”
“We need other things as well,” Picard explained. He decided he’d try to take advantage of her undisguised distress. “Why don’t you take Nran back to the galley. I think some tea would help—”
Norinda slipped her arm through Nran’s, and with that simple movement, her figure became fuller, her face younger, her uniform snugger. For the first time, Picard found himself wondering if she was as vulnerable to others’ influence as others were to hers.
“It is you who refuse to accept the gift I offer, who need my help,” she said with a touch of petulance. She looked over at Kirk in pity. “Where is this thing you want more than your own happiness? Where is your son?”
Kirk looked at Picard, as if expecting Picard to say something.
But Picard said nothing, not certain what Kirk wanted.
“Jean-Luc,” Kirk said at last. “You know.”
Picard shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jim. I don’t.”
“But he’s here with—”
A new voice burst out across the bridge, sweeping Kirk’s confusion aside.
“Daa-ad!”
It was Joseph.
22
S.S. CALYPSO, STARDATE 57487.7
Kirk whirled around to see Joseph charge at him from behind his own desk!
Kirk opened his arms to his son and lifted him up in an unbreakable bear hug. Beyond maintaining any semblance of composure, he kissed his son’s head, his cheek, held him out to look at him, then pulled him close again. The heart-stopping shock of seeing Teilani again hadn’t faded. The moment of recognition had been electric, resonating within him still. Her hair, her skin, her eyes so bright, so full of life, all caught in one exquisite, painfully sharp instant, had left him drained, numb.
There had been too much loss in his life. Teilani. Spock. Only holding his son in his arms once more could renew Kirk’s strength to keep grief at bay.
“Where have you been? Where have you been?” Kirk said.
Joseph’s answer was incredible. He had been close by ever since Kirk had entered the bridge. Very close.
“Right here, Dad!” Joseph squirmed impatiently in his arms, pointed back at Kirk’s desk. “There’s a crawlspace. Uncle Scotty told me. For boxes and old stuff. That’s where I hid when the bad guys came.” Joseph suddenly looked worried. “I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone until I knew it was safe. Not even you, Dad. That’s okay, right, Dad?”
Kirk squeezed his son one more time. “Perfectly okay.”
Joseph squirmed again, and Kirk reluctantly let him down and unleashed him on the other adults on the bridge.
The child quickly made the rounds, calling out, “Geordi! Uncle Jean-Luc! Uncle Bones!” Then he stopped quietly in front of Norinda, and put on his best manners. “Hello, ma’am.” He stared at her ears. “Are you a Romulan?”
Kirk felt uneasy the way Norinda gazed at Joseph. “Do you like Romulans?” she asked.
Joseph nodded eagerly. “I’m Romulan. Sort of. I’m Reman, too. And Vulcan, and human, and Klingon. Uncle Bones says that makes me pure trouble!” Joseph glanced back at Kirk. “It’s okay to say that, right?”
Kirk nodded, still shaky with relief. “Pure trouble is all right.” He and Joseph had had talks about the concept of species being “pure.” It was an outmoded concept, reeking of past injustices and bigotry. As a Vulcan-human hybrid, Spock had directly experienced such prejudice, and Joseph had been an attentive audience for Spock’s stories of his own childhood.
“Well, I’m not Romulan,” Norinda said. “But I like Romulans.”
Joseph looked at her skeptically. “Then what are you?”
“What would you like me to be?”
Kirk went on alert, looking for any sign that Norinda was reaching into Joseph’s mind, ready to step in if she showed the slightest indication that Teilani was to reappear.
But all that happened in response to her question was that Joseph gave an elaborate shrug and said, “I dunno.”
Norinda stared at Joseph for several silent seconds, then said, “I believe you.” She smiled. “Would you like to see where I live on Remus?”
“Sure,” Joseph said.
That was when Kirk knew it was time to bring this to an end. “There’s no time, son. We have to leave soon.”
“No. You don’t,” Norinda said.
“He’s not going down to Remus.” Kirk wasn’t about to let Joseph out of his sight again. He stood beside his son, put his hand on his shoulder.
Norinda turned her attention from Joseph and Kirk to Picard. “Jean-Luc, you asked for a favor from me, to meet some friends of the Jolan Movement.”
Picard seemed apprehensive. “Yes…” he said cautiously.
“For me to do that favor for you, I need you to do a favor for me. Convince Captain Kirk that his son should visit me on Remus.” She glanced at Kirk, but there was no power to her smile, no subliminal connection. “Just for a day, Captain. Jean-Luc and I will take good care of him.”
Kirk moved to forestall Picard, who clearly was trying to think of something to say to him, as if the favor Norinda mentioned could in any way be as important as his son’s safety.
“I don’t care what favors anyone has promised,” Kirk said. “Joseph is not leaving this ship.”
“Aw, Da-ad,” Joseph said. “I really want to go! Really really! Can I? Please?”
Kirk stared at his son in surprise. Joseph loved to negotiate, but it had been more than a year since he had whined to get something he wanted. Kirk had never responded to that tactic, so Joseph had quickly learned to abandon it.
“Joseph, that’s not—”
But then Joseph did another atypical thing—he interrupted, swinging on Kirk’s hand like a little tree sloth. “I’ll be careful! And I’ll be safe! We can use secret codes, like when you told me to hide in the cabinet when the bad guys came, and then you’d tell everyone that I got beamed up by a Starfleet transporter so the bad guys would think that I was someplace else but all the time I was safe right here, right?”
Kirk’s surprise gave way to a stunning realization.
“And I kept busy up here, like you told me. And I cleaned the recirculators and the walls and—Uncle Bones! Did you like the way I cleaned sickbay?”
Kirk let Joseph’s hand slip from his. His child stood alone on the deck looking up at him.
“I really really want to go, Dad. You really really should let me. Okay?”
It couldn’t be more obvious what was expected of him, so Kirk did what he had to. He shifted gears, looked at Norinda with stern parental concern, and said, “Just one day.”
She nodded in agreement.
Kirk pointed a finger at Joseph. “And you behave yourself, young man.”
“Yes, sir!” Joseph ran at Kirk again, gave him a hug, then ran over to Picard and Norinda. “Let’s go!”
Picard seemed confused. “You’re sure, Jim?”
Kirk shrugged as if his son hadn’t been missing under dire conditions for the past two days. “If I can’t trust you, Jean-Luc…” He waved at Joseph. “Have…fun.”
Joseph waved back. “Thanks, Dad.”
And as simply as that, Kirk said good-bye to his son, and Norinda and Picard and Nran were in the turbolift, on their way back to the cargo bay and Norinda’s transport.
La Forge had stayed behind because of his insistence that the Calypso could fall from orbit at any second, unless he ran his diagnostics at once. But instead of hurrying down to engineering, La Forge remained on the bridge with Kirk and McCoy. “I don’t think Captain Picard was expecting you’d do that,” La Forge said to Kirk, with unconcealed puzzlement. “I mean, I know he’ll appreciate it. It could mean the difference that’ll stop a war, but…well, I’m surprised.”
Kirk enlightened him, grinning. “Commander La Forge, I’m going to take a wild guess that you don’t have children.”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“Well, I do,” Kirk said. “And trust me, the little boy who just left here with your captain and that shapeshifter isn’t my son. He’s Admiral Janeway’s EMH.”
La Forge whistled in amazement. “You’re kidding!”
Kirk stepped back to the open door of his office. “Joseph, if you’re down there—everyone’s gone! It’s safe!”
Kirk smiled hugely as he heard a scrabbling under his desk, then the clank of a square of decking as it was shoved aside.
He beamed as a familiar little bald head popped up from behind his desk, and as he had the pleasure of being reunited with his son a second time in one day, this time it was for real.
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