“Of course.” Chakotay finally nodded and moved to accept her offer.
Once they had settled themselves, Seven noticed the sleeping figures arrayed nearby. The privation they had endured while in hiding had clearly taken a toll. An unpleasant odor emanated from many of the small piles of tattered rags beside the cots. Seven wondered that they had not been immediately reclaimed, but quickly reconsidered. When one has had nothing, every single scrap was treated like a treasure and would be difficult to part with.
Speaking with considerable restraint, Chakotay said, “The last time we spoke, your people had reestablished your link.”
Riley nodded, her face hardening. “We did, and though I apologize for the way we forced your assistance, I cannot regret the outcome.”
“And what was the outcome?” Chakotay asked, clenching his jaw.
“The new link functioned exactly as we had anticipated. Once we were again joined, the conflicts ceased. Over the next few years, we established a new and vastly superior means of coexisting on the planet.”
“Superior?” Chakotay said, with an uncharacteristically judgmental tone.
Riley held up her palm in acquiescence. “A poor choice of words. I apologize. But compared to what our life had become, it was certainly preferable.”
“How did the collective function without a queen?” Seven asked.
“It was challenging to adapt at first,” Riley allowed, “and none of us were eager to impose our will upon the others. Initially we focused more on maintaining a sense of harmony. Gradually, people began to find their way toward a means of contributing to the good of the whole that interested them, and eventually several small hierarchies developed, for directing work or acquiring resources. It was similar to our former structure, Seven of Nine,” she added with enough emphasis to communicate that she was not eager to engage in a discussion of the varying hues of pots and kettles.
“So it was paradise?” Chakotay asked, skeptical.
Riley smiled wanly. “No,” she admitted, “that came later.” She exchanged a knowing glance with Seven.
“How?” Chakotay asked.
“Our society was functional and secure. Everyone received according to their needs and contributed according to their abilities. Over time, there were urges toward more individual means of relation and expression, and where they could be, they were accommodated.”
Seven knew that all manner of odd interpersonal relationships had developed among Borg severed from the hive mind. But she could not imagine how this cooperative had functioned.
“Some began to wonder if the link was still necessary, and we debated the idea with great passion. However, few of us were willing to risk the chaos we had once known . . .” Riley’s voice trailed off, as if she were struggling to find words for her next thoughts.
“And then?” Chakotay prodded gently.
Riley looked to Seven. “You must know.”
“I know what I experienced, Doctor,” Seven said. “But I would very much like to hear your version.”
Riley nodded and clasped her hands before her. “And then, on an otherwise normal day, everything changed. Our link was suddenly absorbed by—no, lost in—something much greater. At first it was terrifying. I remember thinking that somehow the Borg had found us again. I didn’t know what else it could be. We were seventy-nine thousand eight hundred and ninety-one minds, and a moment later, we were millions.”
“Billions,” Seven corrected her gently.
“But through the chaos, there was a . . . light. I don’t know what else to call it. We were welcomed into a new existence, and it was immediately clear that in that place, we would once again be ourselves, and so much more.” Turning to Seven, she asked, “Is that what it was like for you?”
“In some ways,” Seven acknowledged. “Frankly, I do not remember . . . much.”
There was a long pause, during which Riley seemed to search Seven’s face with a hungry curiosity. “How could you bear to refuse it?”
Seven felt warm tears rising to her eyes, and slowly she reached out for Riley’s hands. Her eyes were glistening, as well, as she accepted Seven’s hand. “My individuality had become more important to me than the perfection the Caeliar were offering,” Seven replied.
Riley nodded and squeezed Seven’s hands. After a moment, Seven pulled back. The feeling of shared loss was almost overwhelming. Seven had not known until this moment how much it would mean to her for another being to have shared her experience with compassion and absolute understanding.
“Why did you refuse it, Riley?” Chakotay interjected softly.
She tore her eyes from Seven’s to stare at him in wonder. “I would think that was obvious.”
Seven looked at the cots and noted the size of some of the sleepers, as well as the accommodations where several were sharing cots.
“You had children?” Seven whispered in awe.
Riley smiled with joy. “I was trying to put it delicately before, but, yes, we did.”
“ ‘Individual means of relation and expression’?” Chakotay asked with a smile.
“It wasn’t anticipated,” Riley went on, “but not long after the link was stabilized, many of our more organic urges returned. There seemed to be no reason at the time to try and repress them. We were a collective, but we were not Borg. All of us wanted to explore what we could make of this new life.”
Understanding dawned, giving Seven a deeper appreciation for what Riley and the others had sacrificed. “The children had never been Borg,” she said softly.
“They couldn’t join the gestalt,” Riley said, nodding. “We couldn’t leave them behind.”
“Did you . . . ?” Chakotay began.
“No,” Riley replied. “But once I knew that some would remain, I just couldn’t . . .” She was unable now to hold back her tears.
Finally, Chakotay moved toward her and gently placed comforting hands on her shoulders. When Riley had collected herself, she continued, “We were left in peace for less than a month, then the Tarkons arrived and began depositing hopeless refugees on our world. We retreated into a series of underground bunkers we’d created during the troubled years and long since abandoned. We scraped by, making runs to the surface to steal food and water. And then, yesterday, you arrived.” After a long pause she added, “This should have been the first thing I said: thank you, so very much. You’ve saved us. Again. I don’t know how much longer we could have survived.”
Chakotay nodded and replied sincerely, “You are most welcome.”
Riley smiled, and this time her smile was returned in full force. “Can you ever forgive me?” she asked quietly.
“I understand,” Chakotay replied. Riley nodded in acceptance. “You should get some rest now. I’ll be back in the morning. We need to discuss our next move.”
“Move?” Riley asked.
“Our fleet is going to remain in the Delta Quadrant for the next few years,” he offered. “But from time to time, some of our ships may return to the Alpha Quadrant.” Riley clearly wondered how this was possible, but held her peace. “This ship isn’t designed to accommodate you, but I believe we could make arrangements for you on Voyager for the short term. Before I heard your story, I was considering spreading you around the fleet until other arrangements could be made, but not now.” He added, “It might be close quarters, but if you’re willing, we’ll make it work. As soon as possible, we can return you to the Federation, where I’m certain a permanent solution can be found.”
“I wonder if I might trespass a little further on your kindness?”
“How so?” the captain asked.
“Those of us who were once Borg were all transformed by our experience of the Caeliar. We still don’t understand it, but we remain connected through something the Caeliar left with us.”
“They’re called catoms,” Seven answered her unspoken question. “They facilitated your communication with me.”
“That was the oddest thing,” Riley said. “I s
ensed you and I knew I had to speak with you. I didn’t actually know how I reached you, but something in me knew I could.”
“Your Borg implants were replaced by a very advanced form of programmable matter. If your case is like mine, and I suspect it is, these catoms are meant to sustain the functions formerly performed by your implants, though they present other unique opportunities.”
“I would appreciate it if you would share with us whatever you have learned about them.”
“Of course,” Seven replied readily, earning her a quick glance of disapproval from Chakotay.
“The thing is,” Riley went on, unaware of the brief flash of tension, “we haven’t given up on our determination to create a new life for ourselves. I believe we can still do that here. We don’t need to return to the Federation.”
“We could start looking for a new planet for you to colonize,” Chakotay offered.
“I know of one, quite a ways from here, and not likely to be troubled by the Tarkons for a long while. If your ship has journeyed this far into the Delta Quadrant from the Sol system, I can’t imagine that it would take you more than a few days off course.”
“Where?” Chakotay asked, puzzled.
“Arehaz,” Riley replied.
Chakotay looked to Seven to see if the name meant anything to her.
“The planet where the Borg originated,” she answered.
Chapter Fifteen
Q CONTINUUM
Q laughed. “A third option?”
Kathryn Janeway didn’t share in his amusement. As she weighed both of the impossible alternatives now before her, she decided that nothing in the vast array of experiences she brought to this moment had in any way prepared her to confront them. Countless times, when Kathryn had lived, she had spared little time and energy on choices that had better than average chances of ending her life. Often they were made in the heat of battle, where time and energy were at a premium, but the utter recklessness with which she had lived was now incomprehensible to her. Less dangerous but no less significant decisions had been made through rigorous application of reason and logic, weighing pros and cons, risks and rewards, the potential for joy and pain. But looking back, these choices had, as often as not, ended in ways she could not have foreseen.
That was life, part of her counseled.
At every turn, guided by her heart and mind, Kathryn Janeway had made the best possible decision she could with the information at her disposal, certain that if it proved wrong, she would find a way, in time, to make it right.
But this was not life. She no longer had a heart or mind to help her wrestle through the dilemma. Q had done his best to explain the nature of her existence. She was all that she was or ever would be. She was pure consciousness, no longer bound by the mundane realities of corporeal existence. She had briefly tasted the life of a Q and had been humbled by its magnificence. Now, she was expected to decide rationally whether some greater unknown, and possibly unknowable, power held her in its hand. Was it guiding her toward the ultimate fate of all mortal life? Was the inner certainty that she must leave well enough alone, rather than return to her former existence, where every moment would be fraught with danger, doubt, and pain, correct? Yes, life contained its fair share of joys great and small, obstacles conquered, passions shared, companionship and love. But Kathryn could not lie to herself and pretend that the good outweighed the bad. Increasingly as she had aged, Kathryn had felt that her moments of pure, unadulterated happiness were few and further between.
Was that her fault? Had she consciously, or subconsciously, sought out life’s challenges out of a need to constantly prove herself? Now, she was forced to acknowledge that she had been driven by the fear that if she did not continue to push herself, she would find herself alone with only her regrets for company.
There was no easy answer here. Either choice, to release control to the will of the multiverse, or reassert her fragile illusion of control upon the multiverse’s vast and incomprehensible designs, was terrifying. Kathryn knew that if she chose the second, she would immediately be thrust into a new crisis that now frightened her as much as it did Q.
Her mind and heart, or whatever now stood in their former places, were equally divided.
Do I have a third option?
Suddenly Kathryn remembered standing in da Vinci’s cluttered studio, staring into a blazing fire and finding in its depths an alternative choice.
No, she thought, brushing quickly past her fateful decision to form an alliance with the Borg. That had been a tactic, and its greatest virtue lay in the fact that it had never before been tried.
She needed something more than an idea with potential.
Willing herself to stillness, Kathryn sought the eye of the storm, the calm center she had occasionally accessed in times of need. It had never disappointed her.
Another memory surfaced, gently rising through her awareness, and she grasped for it, desperate that it not slip away. She sat in a small room with three aged people, two crotchety men and a woman, who had either represented or somehow actually been the ancestral spirits of the Nekisti monks. Kes, a girl she had loved and nurtured, was near death. Kathryn had undertaken a sort of spirit quest in order to gain the scientific data she required to save Kes’s life. The “ancestral spirits” had counseled her to repeat the action that had injured Kes in the first place, to carry her into an energy field that would likely kill both of them. Her only choice seemed to be to let go the science, logic, and reason, and embrace something she’d rarely used: faith.
Following their counsel, Kathryn had survived and Kes had been saved. For several blissful hours after, she had lived in a transformed state where possibilities beyond anything she had ever imagined seemed more concrete than any reality.
Faith.
Her soul.
They had always been there, underpinning what she believed were more useful to her: reason and passion. But, however briefly, Kathryn had touched something infinitely deeper. That short exposure had left her adrift but more firmly anchored to herself.
She had never shared with anyone the absolute devastation she had felt when a scientific explanation had been discovered to explain the “miracle.” Had she spent more time in the company of her soul prior to this experience, she would not have been as quick to return to business as usual.
Kathryn did not need to locate her soul within her. This ineffable thing was now the sum total of her reality.
It was all that had been left to her.
And more than enough.
Kathryn Janeway laughed.
“You’re right,” she said through her mirth.
“About what?” Q asked gently.
“I don’t need another option.”
“Then you’ve made your decision?”
Kathryn searched for any hint of inner conflict and found none. She now understood that both of her choices were nothing more than potential paths. One promised immediate bliss, or at least release; the other, more of what she already knew. But the first would always be there for her. The second was a one-time-only proposition.
And this knowledge silenced the doubts that had plagued her from the moment she found herself in the Continuum.
“I will go back,” she said. “I don’t know if I will succeed or fail, but I find the need to try outweighs the desire to absolve myself of any responsibility.”
Q didn’t have to express his relief or his gratitude. It rolled through her in a warm wave that buoyed her certainty.
“So, how do we do this?” Kathryn asked, more than ready to get under way.
“It’s really very simple,” Q replied.
Really?
“Your physical form has been scattered into so many particles of dust, an unfortunate by-product of the manner of your death.”
He spoke of it as if it were nothing. Having embraced her decision, Kathryn was now faced with the task of returning her attention to the last moments of her life, and as she did so, the horrors they contain
ed crept toward her.
“But their current arrangement is of no significance. Were your body still intact, it would be easy enough to focus your attention upon it and you would find, as others have, that you could descend back into it with no difficulty. You’ll have to work a little harder, but I assure you, it can be done. You must not doubt this for a moment.”
“You’re saying I need faith?” she asked, teasing him.
“If it helps,” Q replied. “More than that, you need to concentrate. The entire cosmos, every atom that exists, is now visible to you. Allow yourself to see them for what they are, and soon enough you will find those that once belonged to you.”
“And once I’ve found them?” she asked warily.
“They are yours to do with as you will,” he said. “Order them to organize themselves as they once were and actually tend to want to be, and they will not refuse you.”
After a long moment, during which Kathryn memorized the steps he had prescribed and imagined that she could and would complete them, she was ready.
“Okay,” she said.
“You can do this,” Q assured her.
“I know.”
“I’ll be right here,” he promised. “If you lose your way . . .”
“I won’t,” she assured him.
• • •
It began as an opening, an expansion. Once the complexity of the multiverse yawned before her, it was tempting to explore, but fear kept her priorities in order.
Kathryn dared not wander too long within the brilliance, the infinite cascading interplay of energy and matter. This was a Q’s birthright, not hers. She was working with borrowed knowledge, and, conscious of its limitations, she strove only to do as she had been told.
With no voice, she called to those tiny pieces of light that had once belonged to her. She willed them to return to her. She created an imaginary mirror in which she could view her progress, and projected upon it her best recollection of her former physical being.
Soon enough, in bits and pieces, her call was answered. She refused to allow the fragmentary nature of the experience to dissuade her. Patiently, one atom at a time, Kathryn sifted the sands and accepted, grain by grain, what was rightfully hers.
Star Trek: Voyager - 041 - The Eternal Tide Page 15