Star Trek - Voy - Mosaic

by Mosaic

  "You realize," said Cheb, "that probably every one of us is going to end up at Starfleet Academy next fall. I propose we repeat this dinner-next February in San Francisco." Cheb searched in his duffel and extracted a bottle of wine. "A toast to the occasion."

  "Is that real?" asked Anna. "It's synthehol, isn't it?"

  "This is an authentic Pinot Noir from northern California," said Cheb, pouring some into a cup and sniffing it with the elan of a wine steward. Kathryn wasn't sure how she felt about real alcohol. She'd never actually tasted it; she had experimented with synthehol because it was a substance over which one had control. Alcohol was not, and she'd always considered it somewhat subversive because of that.

  Cheb tasted it, pronounced it satisfactory, and then moved around the room, pouring for each of them. Kathryn watched to see if anyone else would refuse, but no one did. When he reached her, she found that she couldn't be the only one in the group to say she didn't want it. She watched as Cheb poured her some of the dark red liquid. Well, one cup couldn't hurt-and it did seem in keeping with the romantic atmosphere they were creating. Cheb raised his cup, held it high, said solemnly, "Next year in San Francisco," and they all took a sip of the wine. It tasted like liquid velvet to Kathryn, dark and pungent.

  They munched sandwiches and sipped hot, fragrant soup, talking softly as they gazed around the shadowy room. Ancient damask wallpaper was threadbare, peeling in places, lending to the air of faded grandeur. The house was like an aging doyenne, trying to present the elegant faqade of youth, but showing instead its wrinkles and gray roots. One bottle of wine split among four of them gave each a little less than two cups apiece. Kathryn found herself wishing there were more; a rosy warmth had permeated her body, a pleasurable sensation that enhanced the glow she always felt when she was with Cheb.

  "All right," he announced, "time to explore the rest of the house. Wait till you see the bed on the third floor. It's a huge four-poster with this incredible brocade canopy."

  Cheb led them into a huge entrance hall, around which wrapped an ornate carved staircase that climbed four stories to a central skylight high above. It was intimidating and foreboding, but utterly inviting at the same time. The young people moved toward the stairs, ran their hands over a burnished wood banister that, strangely, was polished and dust-free. Kathryn inspected her fingers.

  "You'd think it would be covered with dust. It's almost as if someone has polished it." She sniffed at her fingers and caught a faint scent of pine oil. "And not long ago."

  Cheb shrugged. "Magruder's will provided for the house to be kept up. There may have been a cleaning crew in here recently."

  But now Kathryn detected another vague scent, a woody, smoky trace that was there one moment, then gone. "Do you smell that?" she asked. "It's like... like a fireplace that's been left to smolder."

  The others stared at her. She realized that she was the only one of the group who would have had any experience with a fireplace. There was one in her house, and her parents lit a fire frequently. But that was because they were traditionalists; most families whose children attended the Institute would not have such an archaic feature in their homes. They had climbed to a landing which held a huge, elaborately carved armoire. It, too, had been recently polished, and gleamed in the reflected light of their palm beacons. Again, Kathryn couldn't resist running her fingers over the lustrous wood, as though by doing so she could make a connection to the former inhabitants. But Cheb pulled her on. As they climbed upward, their lights created strange, ghostly shadows, elongated patterns, distorted and eerie. Kathryn found herself feeling apprehensive. She was not a fearful person, and gave absolutely no credence to ghost stories-and yet she found herself remembering what Cheb had said about the former mistress of this castle. Had she met her death here, at the hands of a willful, possessive husband? Did her bones lie silently within the walls of this edifice? Had it become not only her monument but her tomb?

  She tried to shake off the feeling. She was now a little light-headed, a sensation she owed to the wine, and it wasn't pleasant. She didn't like not feeling completely in charge of her faculties; it made her vulnerable. She vowed not to drink real alcohol again. "There-there it is again," she said. "Don't you smell it?" This time the others had to acknowledge they did. Noses wrinkled against the odor of burned wood, rank and sour. Kathryn looked upward, eyes straining in the murky darkness, looking for signs of an answer to this mystery. Long shadows played on the walls, which were painted in murals of the Greek classical style: nymphs and satyrs romped on Elysian fields, presenting a bizarre vision of an idyllic era which had existed only in the imagination. It looked malevolent, somehow, in the flickering darkness; the figures were grotesque and distorted, and smiles took on a sardonic quality. She shivered, and followed the others.

  "Look at this," Cheb announced. It seemed to Kathryn that his voice had become amplified, slicing through the still house like a plasma torch. The loudness made her uneasy.

  He was pointing at a segment of the mural; on it, an idealized rendering of the very castellated mansion they were standing in stood atop a knoll, surrounded by heather fields.

  "That's this castle, as Mr. Magruder imagined it in Ireland. And this couple-is Magruder and his bonny bride, the fair Mary Joanna Dugan." Kathryn stared at the couple who stood in front of the castle, radiantly happy. The man's arm was around the woman's shoulder, protectively; she gazed up at him with adoration shining from her eyes. Her hair was auburn, long and flowing, tied off her face with a blue ribbon that matched the azure of her Grecian gown.

  He was sturdy and rock jawed, eyes glinting with determination, mouth set in a smile that seemed to bespeak not joy, but success. "My world," she imagined him saying, "under my control."

  "Kathryn, come on." She looked up to see Cheb waiting for her; the others had already mounted the landing to the third floor. She shook off a chill and pulled herself away from the images of the couple and their dream-castle. And then she smelled the acrid wood smoke again, stronger than ever.

  She looked up at Cheb, seeking comfort in his grave blue eyes. Because she was suddenly very, very frightened. "Someone's here," she whispered to him, and was relieved when he smiled and ruffled her hair. "Yeah," he said, "it's the ghost of Mary Dugan."

  His jesting made her feel better. She was being silly, of course. They were alone in this isolated mansion, and she was letting her imagination play tricks on her. Ghost stories, indeed. She grinned back at him and they climbed to the third-floor hallway.

  Where they found the others, pale and quiet, staring down the hall. Kathryn turned to follow their gaze, and saw what they saw: a flickering light was emanating from the crack under a closed door. She took an involuntary breath and clutched at Cheb's sleeve. A coldness began seeping through her.

  To her horror, he began moving down the hall toward the light. She pulled on his arm, hissing at him. "What are you doing?"

  "No one's supposed to be here. We should find out who it is."

  "We're not supposed to be here. Who are we to police anybody else?"

  "I'm with her," said Blake. "Let's get out of here."

  "Are you afraid?" said Cheb, and the challenge in his voice was unmistakable.

  "Yes," replied Blake easily, thereby dissolving Cheb's confrontation. "This has stopped being fun."

  "Is that how you'd be if we were exploring an alien planet? Turning tail and running if you didn't think it was fun?"

  "Sorry, Cheb, I'm not rising to the bait. I'm leaving. Anybody else with me?"

  There was a charged moment and Kathryn suddenly felt things were completely out of control. She wanted to go, but now if she said so, it would be insulting to Cheb. Why had he turned this whole thing into a confrontation? Why had he made this a competition about bravery? But she was spared the need to make a decision. As the four young people stood in the dark hallway, caught in indecision, the door they had been staring at suddenly flung open, and a wraith with flowing auburn hair and a blue gown
came screaming at them, brandishing a lit candelabrum. Anna screamed and bolted down the stairs, followed by Kathryn and Blake. Cheb hesitated briefly on the landing, but the woman's crazed wails were menacing, and even he finally turned and started down. Above them, the woman stood shrieking epithets in a shrill, high tone that made it hard to distinguish just what she was saying. They could see now that she was old, her hair a ratted tangle of gray, her body thin and frail. Kathryn caught snippets of words-"out of my shame," and "never"-but not enough to make sense of.

  And then the woman threw the candelabrum at them. Kathryn felt it whiz past her head, a heavy presence displacing air, a rank smell of burning tallow, and then it thumped onto the stairway, candles still burning. Cheb, slightly behind them, sidestepped it; Kathryn slowed to wait for him, and as she turned to look up the stairs, she saw the draperies burst into flame.

  They knew the mansion had been built before firesuppression technology had become mandatory; they knew the old, dry drapes and furnishings would be like tinder. Already the flames had climbed the drape and it was smoking profusely. Kathryn glanced up and saw the woman, fist at her mouth, staring at the fire and retreating down the hallway.

  "We have to put this out, Cheb," she said quietly. The panic she had felt earlier was beginning to wane as a sense of purpose and duty overtook her. "She'll be trapped up there and die."

  Blake and Anna had stopped running and were climbing the stairs back toward them. The fire had now engulfed most of one drapery. "Let's do it," said Cheb, and they all ran back up toward the flames. "Pull down all the drapes-we can use them to beat the fire out." Blake and Anna began to do that, while Kathryn and Cheb turned to the burning drape and, grabbing hold of still-hot chunks of the cloth, tried to tug it from its moorings. Soot and charcoal smeared their hands, and thick smoke made it hard to breathe; they both coughed desperately and their eyes watered. Suddenly the burning material ripped loose and came tumbling down toward them. Cheb shoved Kathryn hard and she stumbled down the stairs as he jumped after her to avoid being trapped under the flaming drape. An edge of it caught him on the head, however, and Kathryn saw with horror that his hair had begun to burn.

  She leaped toward him, spreading her hands on his head, blotting out the fire. There was a moment's registration of pain, but she shut it away, refusing to focus on it.

  "Let us through!" Blake and Anna were hauling one of the drapes they had managed to pull off its tracks, and they flung it on top of the one that was burning; then they jumped on top of it, jumping and stomping on it to smother the fire underneath. Within minutes, a pall of bitter smoke hung in the air, but the fire was extinguished.

  Sooty and adrenaline-fed from the ordeal, the young people sat on the stairs, drawing ragged breaths. Then Kathryn looked up toward the landing and saw the pale face of the old woman as she stood silently, watching them. Kathryn's eye caught the woman's, and she saw terror and vulnerability. Then the woman drifted backward, out of sight. The fire, the danger, the success of their efforts-all these had vanquished the earlier anxieties she had felt, and now she rose, staring after the woman.

  "What are you doing?" Cheb's voice was challenging, authoritative. "I'm going to find out who she is and what she's doing here."

  "We've got to get out of here."

  "You were the one who wanted to go see who was in that room." Kathryn was beginning to feel annoyed with Cheb; he wanted to be in charge of everything.

  "We have to be at our beam-out site in fifteen minutes. That doesn't leave any extra time."

  "Go ahead without me. You can come back for me later."

  "No, I can't. Not without someone knowing about an unauthorized transport."

  "Then maybe someone will have to know. I can't leave that old woman here, after the fire, without knowing who she is and if she's all right." She held Cheb's look for a hard moment, realizing as she did that she had never confronted him about anything, had always deferred to what she felt was his superior decisionmaking capacity. For a moment, she doubted herself. Was he right? Was it foolish to stay here when the safety of home was only minutes away? When they could be out of this place without anyone knowing they'd ever been here?

  But the memory of the fear in the old woman's eyes was too urgent to be ignored. She couldn't leave now. She forced herself to hold Cheb's gaze. And finally he looked away.

  "Be at the beam-out site in an hour. I'll arrange another transport." There was no bitterness in his voice; it was completely neutral, as though they were discussing the weather.

  "Fine." She saw the others start down the stairs, and she went the other way, onto the landing, and down the corridor where the mysterious door stood open, spilling flickering light onto the threadbare carpet. She moved toward it soundlessly, without apprehension, pulled along as though by an unseen thread.

  CHAPTER 11

  HARRY AND KES HAD PULLED THEIR PHASERS INSTANTLY, flung themselves against the side walls of the stone corridor, and trained their weapons on the Kazon.

  Strangely, the Kazon seemed unaware of them, and instead turned in place, looking around them, speaking softly to each other. Speaking silently to each other, in fact. Harry realized they were talking and gesturing with some energy-why couldn't he and Kes hear them?

  He saw Kes looking upward and realized she, too, was aware of something strange. He glanced back at the Kazon and now saw that they were standing against a background of foliage. Of course there was no foliage down here-but there was above ground. The figures of the Kazon moved off; he uttered a short laugh and holstered his phaser.

  "What is it? Where are they?" asked Kes. "It's an ancient device. On Earth they called it a camera obscura. There's a lens up above, positioned so it reflects an image onto this surface." Harry examined the smooth wall against which they had seen the Kazon, and saw that it was a finely ground surface. Images projected onto it would be seen in a well-detailed and undistorted reflection. That was why the Kazon had seemed so real. "It's odd," he mused, studying the wall. "A camera obscura is primitive technology, but this surface is very sophisticated, composed of several hard polymer agents."

  Kes looked around them, playing her wrist beacon in all directions. "I wonder if the fact that it's here means there's some significance to this location."

  He shot her a glance. "I think you're right. The fact that someone could be warned of activity on the surface from here would suggest this is someplace they wanted to protect."

  They looked around to realize they had reached a Tintersection in the corridors, with the "screen" forming the back wall and two branches of tunnels extending right and left from it. They began searching all the walls carefully, running their hands over the surface, looking for any detail, any design that might provide a clue to the importance of this intersection.

  Ten minutes later, they were still searching, when suddenly Kes' head snapped around and she froze like a bird anticipating a predator. "What?" Harry said, but she shushed him, straining as though to hear something far away. Then she began moving down the corridor to the left, walking with a sureness that belied the inky blackness of their surroundings.

  Harry followed. Kes seemed in touch with something, and he had learned to trust her instincts. He kept her in the beam of his wrist beacon, and she seemed to float before him, a dainty, weightless creature gliding in the blackness.

  Suddenly she stopped, and lifted her hand to stop him, too. Then, slowly, she turned to him, and he saw an expression of wonder and anticipation on her face.

  "Somewhere close... I know it's here...."

  "What is?"

  But she kept turning in place, as though trying to tune in to whatever extrasensory perception she was experiencing. "I'm not sure. I hear that sound again... it's... it's a clicking noise."

  "Like a code?"

  "I don't know."

  Harry scanned everything and was about to give up when the tiniest blip registered on his tricorder. What was it? He moved in the direction he had picked up the reading,
and approached what seemed to be a dead end to the tunnel. They'd run into these over and over again, and never did they show any distinguishing mark. Nor did this one, he determined after a thorough search.

  He was ready to turn back, when his eye flickered to something high on the wall perpendicular to the dead end. It's a wonder he spotted it; it called no attention to itself and appeared only as a slight crack in the stone. But it was the shape that caught Harry's eye: it was exactly like the cobalt blue spires he had followed on the surface, which pointed the way from grave site to grave site.

  "Kes, look at this." She moved to him and stared upward. "It's like the spires we saw up above."

  He stretched out his arm and extended his hand so his finger could reach the small etched design. He touched it, applying only slight pressure. There was a sense of movement, and then a rush of chill air filled the corridor. They turned, shining their beacons, to discover that a panel had opened in the side wall. A set of stone stairs led downward into darkness, and a cool, moist breeze wafted upward. Curiously, Harry felt no apprehension. The dark stairway seemed inviting. He turned to Kes and saw that she was smiling, and then they began, without a word or a question, to descend.