by Dayton Ward
The sentinel reached out and placed a hand on Shar’s shoulder. “My name is Tolad th’Zarithsta. Our bondgroup was among the test subjects. My zh’yi was able to carry a child to term even though she supposedly had grown too old to do so. Our shei recently celebrated her fourth birthday.”
It was as though the sentinel’s hand had brushed aside an immense weight resting on Shar’s shoulders, and he could not help but smile at what he had just heard. “That is wonderful. I’m happy for you.”
Though he nodded, th’Zarithsta’s expression fell. “We were among the very few fortunate bondgroups, of course.”
Shar sighed at the words. Despite the theories Dr. sh’Veileth had put forth, the “Yrythny solution” had not lived up to the promise she had offered to the Andorian people. After the Science Institute gave her permission to start her trials, sh’Veileth began her tests using volunteer bondgroups willing to have their chromosomes augmented with Yrythny DNA. The initial field consisted of twenty bondgroups, expanding within the following year to well over a hundred test subjects. It was soon after this expansion that the first problems began to surface. Unexpected side effects in the forms of failed or troubled pregnancies increased, as did all manner of birth defects among surviving newborns. Even with such problems being recorded, volunteer bondgroups—sometimes as many as a dozen or more in a single day—continued to seek out Dr. sh’Veileth, desperate to avail themselves of the experimental treatment. When the ratio of problem-riddled pregnancies passed fifty percent, the authorization sh’Veileth had been given was retracted, and the trials came to a halt. Despite that action, the effects of the controversial research had left a lasting impact, as Andorians across the planet once again began to consider their potential demise as a species.
“The Science Institute called an end to the program,” th’Zarithsta continued, “and probably for good reason, but I’m happy to see that those efforts haven’t been completely abandoned. Especially after all that’s happened.”
“We have new people working on it now,” Shar replied. “Much of what Dr. sh’Veileth discovered still has merit, but there are obviously enough incompatibilities between Andorian and Yrythny DNA that more research is required. Professor zh’Thiin is one of our greatest scientific minds. If there’s a solution to be found, she’ll find it.” Marthrossi zh’Thiin had even been a mentor to sh’Veileth, with her own list of impressive accomplishments. In addition to the desire to help her species, zh’Thiin also was driven by a personal agenda to resolve the crisis. Three years previously, she and her own bondgroup had been one of sh’Veileth’s test groups, and her pregnancy had ended in miscarriage. It had been zh’Thiin’s last opportunity to bear a child, and she now wanted to ensure that the same thing did not happen to other hopeful parents.
Th’Zarithsta seemed to take comfort in Shar’s words. “And what of you? You’re in Starfleet. Surely there’s so much to be done out there.” As he spoke, he waved one hand skyward, indicating the vastness of space beyond the planet’s atmosphere.
Shrugging, Shar said, “This is my home. I myself was part of a bondgroup, and we volunteered to be one of the test groups for the Yrythny solution. Our zh’yi was able to carry a fetus to term, and the child was born without incident.” He paused, drawing a deep breath as he relived memories both pleasant and mournful. “I elected to stay here for a while, working with Dr. sh’Veileth, before deciding it was time I returned to Starfleet to resume my duties.” He cast his gaze down to the pavement at his feet. “I was en route to what was to be my new posting at Starbase 714 when the Borg came. Though I was traveling alone, my bondgroup decided that they would live with me on the station.” He smiled at one recollection that brought him joy in the midst of such tragedy. “We had decided we would attempt to have another child. They were on their way to meet me at Starbase 714 when the transport ship on which they’d booked passage was intercepted by a Borg cube.” To this day, Shar remembered with utter clarity the brief, terse subspace communiqué he had received, notifying him of the transport’s loss along with all of its passengers. The memories of that day still elicited anguish, which he had tried and failed on numerous occasions to bury in his mind’s deepest recesses as he concentrated on his work. “Then I heard about what had happened here; how much damage had been done to the planet, and how much we’d lost.” Among the still-uncounted casualties was his own zhavey, Charivretha zh’Thane.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” th’Zarithsta said, sadness evident in his eyes.
Shar nodded in understanding. “Then I learned that Professor zh’Thiin would be continuing Dr. sh’Veileth’s work. I knew I needed to be here, doing whatever I could for our people. I requested permanent assignment to the Starfleet contingent stationed here, acting as a liaison between Starfleet Command and the Science Institute.” He shook his head, recalling the minor odyssey he had endured in order to return to Andor. “It took me five weeks to find transportation back here.” He had spent much of that intervening time grieving the loss of his zhavey and his bond group, and by the time he had returned to Andor, his desire and conviction to help his people in any way possible had overridden every other consideration. There would be no leaving this time, he knew; not until he had helped alter Andor’s fortunes in a lasting way.
Feeling a hand on his shoulder once again, Shar looked up to see th’Zarithsta regarding him with an almost paternal air. “If only there were more who felt as you,” the police officer said, before turning his attention to those few Andorians who still watched them from the doorways and windows of surrounding buildings. “Perhaps then the troubles our people face might not seem so insurmountable.”
“They’re not insurmountable,” Shar replied, “regardless of what some might think, or want to think, or have been told to think. There is a solution; we simply have not yet found it.” As naïvely optimistic as he knew that sounded, he believed that a remedy for the crisis engulfing his home world existed.
He had to believe it, for it might well be the only thing separating Andorian civilization from eventual extinction.
2
Half a dozen clouds of various sizes and shapes were all that blemished the otherwise brilliant blue sky. Jean-Luc Picard wondered with some amusement if they were a deliberate choice of the cadre of meteorological specialists overseeing Earth’s perpetually shifting climate conditions, or whether they might have formed of their own volition in utter defiance of the planet’s weather-modification network. He preferred the latter possibility, he decided.
Standing on the narrow dirt path that wound its way around the perimeter of the vineyard, Picard turned his gaze toward the evenly spaced rows of trellises stretching for hundreds of meters across the rolling hillside. The slight breeze carried to his nostrils the familiar aroma of organic fertilizers and soil nutrients, the same odor that he remembered permeating his skin and clothes on many a summer day in his youth. Supported by trellises that elevated them to waist height above the ground, the vines were green and lush, and on the closer rows Picard saw bulging grapes clustered among the leaves. His practiced eye noted the grapes’ rich color. From the looks of things, this season’s harvest would be exemplary.
“Grapes.”
A small hand shot outward, one of its short, stubby fingers pointing toward the rows of vines. Adjusting his stance, Picard shifted the small burden resting in the crook of his left arm so it sat higher on his hip, and he felt the toddler’s legs wrap more tightly around his waist.
“That’s right,” he said to his son, René Jacques Robert François Picard, as he looked into the boy’s bright, wide eyes that were so much like his own. “Those are grapes, and fine ones, at that.” He reached out to brush dirt from René’s left knee, noting the abraded skin there from the stumble the child had taken while trying to traverse the uneven ground. “Your mother’s going to have something to say about this,” he said, gently patting the knee.
“Eat?” René asked, his expression hopeful. At barely one year of ag
e, his vocabulary naturally was limited to a handful of words beyond the usual stream of indecipherable gibberish he delivered with unrestrained enthusiasm. That did not matter to Picard, who often found himself entranced listening to his son’s litany of sounds and mangled syllables.
“Perhaps later,” Picard replied, unable to suppress a smile. As a boy, Picard and his older brother, Robert, had ruined more than one evening meal by stuffing themselves with grapes from the vineyard, much to their father’s consternation. “I think your mother would be upset if I let you spoil your supper.” Even as he spoke the words he imagined the expression on the face of his wife, Beverly Crusher, once she learned that he had deviated from the boy’s strict dietary regimen. After transitioning to eating solid foods, René had quickly established his likes and dislikes, and Picard mused with no small amount of humor that his son’s predilection for grapes as a favorite fruit served only to solidify his place in the family line.
It was René’s first visit to Earth following his birth aboard the Enterprise more than a year earlier. The baby’s delivery, as well as his and Beverly’s immediate postnatal care, had been handled by Dr. Tropp, one of the ship’s senior medical officers. In true Denobulan fashion, he had fawned over René in the days following the birth as though the infant was one of his own children. Indeed, there seemed to be no shortage of volunteers and stand-in aunts and uncles willing to look after the baby. This allowed Beverly—and Picard himself—to get much-needed rest as they acclimated themselves to juggling parenthood with the demands of their respective shipboard responsibilities. Though he had done his level best to prepare himself mentally and physically for the demands of caring for an infant, no amount of reading or listening to the advice offered by Beverly and other parents had proven sufficient for facing the challenges firsthand.
That goes double for the diapers.
Despite the fatigue and stress that was the reality of parenting a newborn, Picard had not minded such things as the late-night diaper changes and feedings. Indeed, he even had anticipated those activities, taking advantage of the opportunity to bond with the boy. They wasted no time establishing a nightly routine, whereby Picard fed René while softly singing songs from his own childhood. Now such rituals were second nature, as much a part of the captain’s daily schedule as reviewing status reports from his first officer and the rest of the Enterprise’s department heads.
Was it really so long ago that I felt uncomfortable around children? The question teased him as he regarded René, the boy entertaining himself with the quartet of pips on Picard’s uniform collar. For the better part of his adult life and despite spending most of the past two decades in command of those far younger than himself, Picard had never considered himself a father figure. After being appointed captain of his previous vessel, the U.S.S. Enterprise-D—the first ship he had commanded that was authorized to carry families—and finding himself in close proximity to children belonging to members of his crew, it had taken him quite some time to warm to their presence. Being viewed as a role model or anything other than the starship’s commanding officer was a notion that had required several years to accept.
The idea of raising his own child was one Picard had pondered at infrequent intervals over the course of his life. His first love had always been space and the unparalleled potential it offered for discovery and the furthering of knowledge. Even after marrying Beverly, he at first had resisted the idea of having a child with her, though his reluctance at the time was not born from common uncertainty at the prospect of fatherhood. Instead, it sprang from the fear of what might happen to such offspring in the face of the renewed Borg threat that ultimately had escalated into an invasion ravaging the Federation during the previous year. With Beverly’s help, he had seen past his own misgivings and realized that raising a child with her would bring with it joys and celebrations unlike anything else he had experienced. It also might be just one more way he could finally leave behind the doubts, cynicism, tragedies, and loss that had gripped him in the face of unrelenting war and calamity for far too long. While the end of the Borg might mark a new chapter in the history of the Federation, Picard knew that the boy he now cradled in his arms represented the next and perhaps most fulfilling act in his own life.
A life spent aboard a ship among the stars, or with the ground beneath my feet? It was a question he had asked himself more times over the past year than he could count. As he and René wandered the rows of grapevines, it seemed only natural to ponder the query yet again.
It’s not as though you’ll change your answer. Or, is it?
Turning from the trellis, Picard looked back the way he and René had come, gazing across the vineyard to the modest chateau sitting amid a cluster of tall, overgrown oak trees. The home and the surrounding grounds had belonged to his family for centuries, and generations of Picards had toiled the earth here. Though he had learned the craft and even the art of tending the vineyard under the watchful eyes of his father and Robert, Picard himself never had developed the same passion for the work. Instead, the thoughts and dreams of his youth had carried him far away from the confines of his home planet and toward the stars that shone down upon him each night. His eventual decision to leave the family business and enter Starfleet Academy angered his father, and the two men would remain at odds over the matter until the elder Picard’s death.
At another time in his life, the captain would have viewed returning to the Picard family home in Labarre, France, as a burden, an obligation to be completed before returning to the familiar environs of space and the life he had chosen. Robert, having assumed stewardship of the vineyards following their parents’ retirement, shared their father’s disapproval of Picard’s career choices. Indeed, for a time, Robert even had resented his younger brother’s apparent dismissal of the family heritage in favor of travel, discovery, and even adventure. Only after Picard’s visit to the chateau following the first Borg attack on Earth did the two brothers close the rift between them, putting aside the petty sibling rivalry that had poisoned their relationship since childhood. It was Robert, acting as the unlikeliest of therapists, who helped Picard begin the process of truly coming to terms with what had happened to him during his assimilation by the Borg and his transformation into Locutus.
I thanked you, Robert, but I never really told you what that has always meant to me.
Doing so would never be possible now, as more than a decade had passed since Robert, along with his son, René, had perished in a fire that had nearly destroyed the family home. The house itself had long since been repaired, but Picard still carried the emotional weight of losing his brother and nephew.
“Papa.”
The gurgled query, accompanied as it was by the soft stroke of a small hand against his cheek, jolted Picard from his reverie. It was only then that he realized just how far he had walked with his son into the vineyard, as though his legs had of their own volition recalled the correct paths. He was not surprised, given the countless times he had navigated the grounds, at first while playing hide-and-seek with Robert and later working the fields with his father. Every centimeter of the property had long since been committed to memory. Standing between two rows of vine-wrapped trellises, he regarded René and saw the quizzical expression in the boy’s eyes. There was no pain or loss there; only the unguarded curiosity that brightened every child’s gaze. With his right hand, René was gesturing toward his mouth, his fingers together in a sign Beverly had taught him to communicate that he was hungry. As if in response, Picard felt a mild rumbling in his stomach.
“All right, then,” he said, reaching up to stroke the boy’s thin auburn hair. “Let’s find your mother and Aunt Marie, and see about lunch.” Turning back the way he had come, Picard began the long trek toward the house. Ahead of him and beyond the row of trellises to his left side, he caught sight of two heads among the vines; one blond with a liberal smattering of gray, the other a deep red that gleamed in the midday sun. When he reached the next intersection among
the rows, he moved over and smiled in greeting at the approach of Beverly Crusher and his sister-in-law, Marie Picard.
“What in the world are you doing all the way out here?” Beverly asked, a chuckle escaping her lips as she drew closer and extended her arms toward René. Unlike Picard, she was dressed in simple, loose-fitting civilian attire, her light-blue silk blouse and matching pants accenting her fair skin.
Picard laughed as René leaned away from him, falling forward into his mother’s waiting embrace. “Seemed like a nice day for a stroll.” He knew they would soon be back aboard ship, and while the Enterprise had always been more his home than any planet, he still remembered his father’s belief that a day of fresh air and sunshine was not to be wasted.
“How long can you stay this time?” Marie asked, reaching up to brush away a lock of her hair from where it had fallen across her eyes. “You know you’re welcome to stay as long as you like, or at least as long as Starfleet will leave you alone.”
“I suspect it won’t be that long,” Picard replied, unable to keep a small tang of bitterness from lacing the words. “The president of the Federation is usually not in the habit of inviting us back here for holiday.”
Eyeing him with a mischievous smile as she noted the soiled, scraped skin on René’s knees, Beverly asked, “Are you in trouble again? Did you kidnap another world leader when I wasn’t looking?”
“No, but the day’s young yet,” Picard said, pulling down on the front of his uniform. “Besides, I promised to refrain from such behavior except in the event of presidential approval.” His unconventional, unprecedented, and wholly unauthorized “detaining” of George Barrile, planetary governor of Alpha Centauri, had—to put it kindly—ruffled more than a few feathers at Starfleet Command, not that Picard had cared. Barrile, whose home planet had largely been spared the ravages of the Borg invasion, had put forth a great deal of protest at the tens of thousands of refugees who had been relocated to Alpha Centauri from damaged or destroyed planets across the Federation. He even had gone so far as to propose his planet’s secession from the Federation. It was not until Picard brought him to Pacifica, a planet that had borne the burden of postwar relief efforts, that the governor saw for the first time the true scope of devastation facing the entire Federation. After that, Barrile even put forth a resolution to the Council that all member worlds reaffirm their commitment to upholding and strengthening the ideals that had first brought them together in the spirit of mutual cooperation and security.