by Diane Duane
Understood.
Is it indeed? Let us see.
Sickbay—
Her mind went up in a flare of anguish and fear. She would not look at that. I have paid that price. I pay it again every day. I will not pay in that coinage now!
Then prevent this.
The terrible pain came and tore at her part of the joined mind, efficiently, fiercely—though not mercilessly. It was not a machine, though it was acting like one, for her sake. And she knew, too, as she strove to deal with the pain, that whatever she might say, he was paying in such a coinage. To some extent, every mind-meld recalled every other. She heard echoes: if only I could forget…to the death, or life for both of us!…cry for the children, weep for the murdered ones!… and many another. And they were all cries of pain. Ah, it is ill named mind-meld, Ael thought in anguish. Heart-meld would be closer.
The children. That echo, wordless, seemed somehow more immediate than the others. There had been some resonance between the mother Horta and her children, even while they were still in the egg, that her other self had sensed without clearly understanding. Were Hortas at all telepathic? Possibly no more so than humans or Rihannsu, but suddenly Ael perceived the lake of lava burning against the darkness of the Horta homeworld’s great depths, and saw the skin of cooling stone across the top of it hardening, going cold and dark, and then breaking and shattering with the flow of the lava beneath it, cracks widening, the liquid fire oozing up, cooling and darkening again. That was the path she had to traverse, the paradigm through which she had to move. The lava was the pain, which always would break through. But the pain itself could be subverted again and again, the energy diverted from it, so that it would go cold; and over that surface one could safely walk.
She swallowed, feeling the rising tide of agony. Or instead, one might accept it wholly, she thought. How often have I pushed it aside, for the sake of duty…or fear?
No more.
She walked out to where the lava crust broke, and the terrible scorching heat of it blasted up at her from the molten stone, blazing, so that her skin went tight with it and her eyes stung, watering terribly.
No more…
And she leaped.
Sickbay.
The rage, the pain, the agony, more intense than she had ever felt before, than she had ever allowed herself to feel before, now swallowed her whole in a blaze of white-hot fire that molded itself to her like a terrible new flesh, devouring the flesh beneath it. My son…
Not my son! He could not have betrayed—
—weep for the children!—
The lava finished burning her flesh away, charred her bones, eating inward…
What did I do wrong? How has he done this to them, to me?!
—cry for the murdered ones!—
Dead at my hand. Not his own. Mine. I am responsible.
—eyes burning, skull alight, the brain flashing into final fire—
Oh my Element, would that I had died instead of him!
There was nothing left of her. It was over.
Sorrow…for the end of things.
Finished…
…when she noticed that the pain was gone, and she was swimming in blazing light that blinded her, but hurt her not at all.
And then she was alone.
She blinked. Behind her, she heard someone move—felt him move, without having to look. It was Spock, coming around to face her, leaning against the desk.
“It is done,” he said. He straightened, trying to look casual about it, but she knew perfectly well what effort the last few minutes had cost him. They had felt like years.
For her own part Ael wiped her face and sat still for several moments, trying to find her composure again. “You are a harsh teacher, Mr. Spock,” Ael said.
He shook his head. “On the contrary, Commander. I merely showed you the path. You walked it…and further than the need of the moment required.”
“I would not be sure of that,” Ael said.
“I would.”
She could find no answer. “The paradigm you chose was an unusual one,” Spock said, “but since it was of your choosing, I believe it will serve you well. Recall it to yourself daily, by way of reinforcing it. Meanwhile, if circumstances allow, a second session within several days might be wise, in order to check that the routine has been correctly installed and implemented.”
She was half tempted to laugh, hearing him speak as dryly of her mind as of a computer into which he had been loading new software. But the metaphor was probably apt. “As you say, that will be as circumstances permit. But for the moment…”
Ael got up slowly, a little stiff from sitting a long time tensed in that chair. She cast around in her mind to see how things felt. Her sense of herself was normal again, save for that thin persistent thread of connectedness between them, carrying at the moment no overheard content, no remotely sensed imagery—just the knowledge that it was there. Last time it had faded quickly; this time she was not quite sure how long it might remain.
Words to describe any of the many things she presently felt eluded her utterly. All Ael could do was bow to him and hold the bow—as she had for Jim, but for different reasons—three full breaths’ worth. She might have held it longer, but she felt his fingers brush her arm, and she straightened.
He had neither moved nor reached out to her. As Ael looked up at him again, she caught an echo, so indistinct she thought she had not been meant to hear it, and very distant: touching…never touched… “Use it well, Commander,” Spock said. “Or rather, so live and prosper that you need never use it at all.”
Ael went out and found Mr. Naraht waiting for her. She smiled at him with more than the usual affection, though she did not tell him why. When the Enterprise’s transporter room glowed out of existence to be replaced by Bloodwing’s, suddenly the weariness hit her full force, and she stumbled down off the pads like one caught between dream and waking. The doors opened, and Aidoann was there. She opened her mouth to say something, but she checked herself and came forward hurriedly to take Ael by the arms and steady her. “Khre’Riov,” Aidoann said, and then more softly, “Ael, in Fire’s name, what’s come to you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Ael shook her head and tried to laugh, but a weak, shaky laugh it was that came out. “So I have,” she said. “I may yet see many more such, but they and I will hereafter learn to be more at peace with one another, perhaps.” She straightened up, and this time her voice found something of the accustomed steadiness again. “However that may be, the living will be enough trouble for us in the next while, cousin—so let’s go finish setting our ship in order. In just a few hours, the enemy will be at the gate…”
Chapter Seven
RV Trianguli was an A3 giant, something of a loner as stars went. It had no planets—just an asteroid belt about 14 AU out—and its only other claim to fame was its classification as a star of the delta Scuti type, a variable with a difference. Enterprise came coasting in past its radiopause, the primary’s actinic blue-white fire blazing with ever-increasing brilliance on her hull, and on those of Sempach and Nimrod to either side. The increase in the brilliance was not entirely because they were coming closer to it: as they approached, the star could be seen to be gently swelling. Somewhere out there, at a comfortable distance from the star, the Romulans were waiting with the other Federation starships, and Jim found himself hoping the sight of RV made them twitch. It certainly had that effect on him.
Jim was coming back up from engineering on the way to the bridge when he met Spock at the turbolift. “Anything from Hemalat or Lake Champlain?” he asked as they got into the lift.
“They are in position, and the Romulan vessels are all present and accounted for,” Spock said. “Bridge. Apparently the initial meeting went without incident; translator upgrades were exchanged.”
“Good. See to it that Uhura gets what she needs.”
“Additionally,” Spock said, “Ortisei and Bloodwing have left for the neighborhood of
38 Tri…though officially, of course, we do not know that is where they have gone.”
Jim nodded. “Any new insights into your, ah, ‘meeting’ with her?”
Spock looked thoughtful. “Not as such. But regarding your interest in the ship movements and planetary mobilizations I perceived in her memory—there is no possibility of error as regards their genuineness, Captain.”
“Unless she’s being deluded about them too.”
“I rate that probability as very low.”
“How low? Zero?”
Spock gave Jim one of those “you know better than that” looks. “Sorry, Mr. Spock,” Jim said, “but the stakes are a lot higher than usual this time out. I need to know how strong a hand I’m betting on.”
“I would say the odds on the commander being correct in her particulars are significantly better than those for drawing to an inside straight,” Spock said, “as I observed you doing at the open game in the recreation room nine days ago. With predictable results.”
“Ouch,” Jim said. There seemed no point in mentioning that it had seemed like a good idea at the time. “Noted and logged.”
The lift doors opened. “Captain,” Uhura said, “Speedwell has arrived. The ‘neutral ground’ vessel is coming in with her.”
“Oh, the Lalairu ship,” Jim said. The Romulans had been somewhat uneasy about meeting with the Federation delegation on a Starfleet vessel or Federation world, and—though he would not have said so out loud—Jim suspected the Federation complement had similar concerns about walking into a Romulan ship. Therefore both sides had agreed that the actual meetings would take place aboard a vessel of the Lalairu, an independent “family” of species who favored the traveling lifestyle—a species well known for not favoring any one large interstellar bloc over another, and for going their own way, neutral but most seriously armed, preferring to take care of themselves in the empty spaces rather than depend on the protection of federations or empires. The Lalairu had been willing to assist the two parties and had had a ship out this way. Jim was particularly fascinated by this aspect of the meetings; he had never seen a Lalairu ship, though like most other people he had heard about them.
Now Enterprise coasted in close to that brilliant sun, ten million miles out or so, and away past it again, as RV Trianguli continued to swell, like some huge creature taking in a breath, and taking it in, and taking it in…Jim looked at it on the bridge viewscreen with faint unease as he sat down. “That’s not a star that could be successfully seeded, is it, Spock?”
Spock, standing behind the center seat for the moment, raised his eyebrows. “It would be a problematic endeavor, Captain,” he said. “While it is in the ‘possible’ range as far as stellar class is concerned, the mere fact of its variability would complicate matters considerably. Add to the equation the nature of its variability—three different ‘variation’ cycles running at once, so that its luminosity increases and decreases by a full magnitude every thirty-three hours, by two-tenths of a magnitude every five hours, and by six-tenths of a magnitude every fourteen hours—” He shook his head. “This star’s upper atmosphere is already unstable enough. I would be forced to conclude that anyone willing to tamper with it could be judged suicidal.”
“We’ll hope everybody else sees it your way, Mr. Spock,” Jim said softly. “All the same…” He trailed off. There were plenty of other Starfleet vessels here, but he would be keeping an eye on that star regardless.
The star fell away behind them, and Mr. Sulu changed the view for one forward. Way out in the system one could barely make out a faint dusting of light, a long thin diffuse band stretched across the darkness: the star’s asteroid belt, a densely populated region indeed to judge by the fact that it could be seen at all at this distance, with so little magnification. “Was that a planet once, do you think?”
“There has been no research done that I am aware of,” Spock said, heading over to his scanner and bending to peer down into it, “but the conjecture would not be out of the bounds of possibility. Though it is rare for delta Scuti stars to produce planets at all. The question of greatest interest would be, if it had been a planet, what caused the fragmentation?” He worked with the scanner for a moment, then said, “Total mass of material in present orbit would suggest a planet originally about twice the size of Earth, or two-thirds that of Vulcan. Composition mostly the lighter elements. To judge by a sampling of the residue, the core was small and low in metals. More like Vulcan than Earth.” Spock straightened up again, looking at the viewscreen, where that dust of light was beginning to resolve itself into a chain of faint, faint sparks. “Whatever happened to it would have been a major event. I would hope there might be time to investigate further.”
Another gleam of light showed up off to one side of the forward view: the characteristically brief but splendid light trail of a starship dropping out of warp and “braking” hard, the superluminal particles she had carried with her inside her warp field now hitting the inflexible barrier of c and destroying themselves in a brief and furious deceleration rainbow as the field collapsed. As she approached, Jim counted four nacelles—another Constellation-class ship. It was Speedwell, a shade late, as Danilov had predicted, but in good enough time.
“Speedwell is hailing us, Captain,” Uhura said.
“Put them on.”
The viewscreen shimmered into a view of the new arrival’s bridge. In the center seat sat a handsome woman of medium height and build, with short, fluffy silver hair, a round, cheerful face, and the devil in her blue eyes. Jim stood up, as much out of respect as for the fact that the newcomer was a woman, and said, “Captain Helgasdottir.”
“Captain Kirk,” Birga Helgasdottir said, inclining her head to him a little. “A pleasure to meet you at last. Even if we do have to do it here at the back end of nowhere.”
“If nothing else,” Jim said, “the background won’t be boring.”
“No, I’d have to agree with you there. I look forward to having the leisure to get to know you better. Meanwhile, Captain, I have someone here who wanted to greet you before we met the rest of the group and got down to business.” She glanced to one side.
A big, burly man in the restrained silver-gray of the Federation’s “commissioned” diplomatic corps stepped into view. Jim was surprised. “Ambassador Fox!” he said. “Don’t tell me you’re finally finished at Eminiar VII.”
The man actually laughed, a sound Jim wouldn’t have thought he had in him when they first met. Robert Fox looked much as he had when he had first become involved in the negotiations between Eminiar and Vendikar, though perhaps a little more silvery at the temples and a little wearier. As far as Jim knew, he had been stuck for at least the last few years in a bout of shuttlecraft diplomacy between the two worlds that had looked like it would become a permanent thing. “Finished?” he said. “Captain, I’m pretty good at my job, but not that good. I’ve been training my replacement for a while now. Apparently the Federation thought this would be a good time to see if he’s learned anything, and to send me off for a change of pace.”
“You’ll get that,” Jim said, “in spades. How are things going between Eminiar and Vendikar?”
“Oh, they’ve got a ways to go yet before people from either side feel comfortable going for vacations on each other’s planets,” Fox said, sounding rueful. “But it’s no surprise. All those centuries of war have left them with a lot of pain. The hostilities proper may be over, but the hostility isn’t. They have a lot to unlearn.”
“But they’re on their way.”
“They are,” Fox said. “When they found out where I was going, though, they specifically asked me to greet you for them.”
Jim put his eyebrows up at that. “How would they have known I’d be here?”
Fox smiled slightly. “Where the Romulans are involved,” he said, “I don’t think anyone would expect this particular meeting to happen without you and Enterprise at least somewhere in the background—if not rather more centrally place
d. Even though the news that’s gotten out to the public services has been somewhat, shall we say, controlled, there’s a lot of speculation out there at the moment. And some people are guessing right about what’s happening.”
Jim nodded. “Well, Ambassador,” he said, “I hope we have some time to sit down and talk between actual proceedings.”
“I suspect we will. Captain?” Fox turned to Helgasdottir.
She turned her attention back to the viewscreen from the yeoman who had just presented her with a padd of orders to sign. “Well, Captain, we’ll see you in a few hours at the informal session. We need to clear in the vessel we’ve been escorting.”
“Certainly, Captain. Until later.”
The screen flicked back to the view of the stars again, and the asteroid belt now even closer, as Sulu dumped Enterprise’s speed right down to impulse. Speedwell matched her, alongside, and Jim sat back down.
Spock came down to stand behind the center seat. “I must confess it is something of a surprise to see Speedwell here at all,” he said. “Her late engagements at 302 Ceti and the Anduath uprising were a considerable distance away.”
“You have a talent for understatement, Mr. Spock,” Jim said. “But somehow it’s not a surprise to me.” The eagles are gathering, Jim thought. Danilov and Helgasdottir here together, they could have had a war all by themselves. And probably would, if allowed.
Jim looked at the screen, where the asteroids were now a chain of tiny stars. One of the documents Ael had left for him to look at had been a list of the major names likely to be appearing for the Romulans in the discussions about to start, and with few exceptions the only balance for which they seemed to have been chosen was one which weighed down hard on one side against the Federation in every way that mattered. Poor Fox was going to have his work cut out for him.
The bridge doors opened and McCoy came in, stepping down to stand off to one side of the center seat. “Is everybody here who’s supposed to be here?” he said.