Living Memory

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “All these years… nothing but vague sensations, emotions… usually not even that. This was… actual words, images. The experience…” She laughed out loud. “Mama, I remembered something! It’s not all gone. Nomad didn’t take it all!”

  As mother and daughter embraced, Malcolm stood close by. “It makes sense. The brain is too interconnected for any memory to be cleanly, perfectly excised. There would still be a web of associations connecting to other parts of your brain. A strong enough reminder could help reconnect the severed pathways.”

  Nyota wept freely as his words sank in. All this time, she’d retreated from her past connections to avoid facing the pain they triggered, the certainty that she would never recover what Nomad had burned away. If she had sought out her past instead, if she had faced the loss alongside her family, how much more could she have recovered?

  Her mother saw all this in her eyes and stroked her hair forgivingly. “It’s all right, my love. You’re home now. We can begin anew.”

  * * *

  The Uhuras moved to the living room and talked well into the night, teaching Nyota about her own life—her formative years in Nairobi and Mombasa, her annual vacations in the country with Babu Uchawi and her cousins, her visits to her mother’s family in Zambia, the family jaunts around the Sol system with her father and Uncle Raheem. M’Umbha and Malcolm regaled her with tales of her father, including the embarrassing details of how Alhamisi Uhura had earned his childhood nickname Damu Pua, “Bloody Nose.”

  Only a few of the tales they told sparked buried memories in Nyota, and then only fragments and flashes—but even that was a blessing she had never expected. She eagerly absorbed everything they told her, amazed to discover her younger self through their eyes—a self at once very familiar and entirely unexpected.

  In time, the discussion came around to the purpose of her visit—not without reluctance on everyone’s part, for none of them wanted the visit to end too soon.

  “You always found subspace radio fascinating,” M’Umbha told her, “ever since Alhamisi showed you the radio on his transport. The idea of talking to people all over the galaxy made your eyes glow. You begged me to get you a subspace ham radio of your own, so you could build it and tinker with it and make new friends across the stars.”

  “Oh, the weird noises that emanated from your room at odd hours while I was trying to study,” Malcolm complained. “All that whistling and buzzing and chattering as you tried to tease signals out of cosmic noise, as you rebuilt your set to boost its gain and range and whatever. I thought that as you got better at it, you’d produce less noise and more signal.” He threw up his hands. “But you embraced the noise! You listened to it longer and louder. You swore you could hear some kind of pattern in the noise, something almost musical.”

  Nyota stared at him sharply. “Did I ever sing back?”

  He shrugged. “Now and again.” After a moment, her intensity registered. “Wait, do you think this is connected to what you came here for? You think you actually were talking to something? Or… singing to it?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping you can tell me.”

  “I’m afraid I tried to pay as little attention as possible. I was trying to get into medical school!”

  M’Umbha touched her arm. “I remember your enthusiasm about what you thought you heard—at first.”

  Nyota turned to her. “At first?”

  “As I recall, you eventually decided that you were hearing the patterns from too many different locations all over space, too far apart and random to be connected. You decided it must have been pareidolia.”

  Omar spoke up for the first time in a while. “Pair-eye what?”

  Malcolm answered. “The tendency of the mind to construct patterns out of randomness. Like the Man in the Moon, or seeing palaces in the clouds.”

  “That’s right,” M’Umbha said. “You decided that you heard something musical in the noise because it was what you wanted to hear. You were so disappointed—you thought for a few weeks there that you were on the verge of a major discovery.”

  “In your defense, you were fourteen,” Malcolm conceded.

  “Still,” their mother went on, “I always had the feeling that it was the yearning that experience gave you—the need to hear the songs in the stars—that inspired you to pursue a career in Starfleet. That sense of awe and excitement in your eyes when you were on the track of a discovery—I saw that same look when your acceptance to Starfleet Academy came through.”

  “So that was how it began?” Nyota asked, awed.

  “As far as I believe, yes.”

  She sighed. “I wish I could remember that. Choosing my path.”

  M’Umbha took her hand. “It’s all right. You have us to remember it for you.”

  Nyota squeezed her hand in return, then stood and began to wander the room, taking in its decorations and the abundant photos of family members and elephant herds. “I appreciate all this, but it’s not bringing me any closer to understanding my connection to the vacuum flares. Unless there’s something in those subspace patterns. Are you sure I gave up on them completely? Did I ever give you any indication that I was researching something like them later on?”

  “Like at the Academy?” M’Umbha considered. “You talked about a lot of things you did there—your studies, your gymnastics, your boyfriends.” She chuckled. “I think you tried to continue your own research projects when you could, but they kept you pretty busy.”

  They spent some time trying to recall details from her stories about Academy life, or showing her letters and mementos she had sent them. She would have loved to take the time to pore through them all in detail, but she strove to focus on what was relevant to her mysterious subspace research. Yet nothing seemed to offer any clear connection to it.

  “None of your Academy friends could offer any insights?” M’Umbha asked after a while.

  “None that I could contact,” Nyota said. “A number of them have died in action over the years.” She leafed through the printouts resting on the table, though after reading them once, she knew them by heart. “Do you remember me talking about this ‘Jen’ person I mention in some of my correspondence? That one confuses me. I did mention a Jen sometimes in my personal logs, but I didn’t have any classmates named Jennifer, or Jendayi, or any likely alternative.”

  Malcolm looked up. “Jen wasn’t a woman. It was… Rajendra, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” M’Umbha said. “Rajendra Shastri. You and he were good friends for a while. Yes, you told me that he was a fellow subspace ham growing up. You were in several of the same classes and worked together on various communication projects. If anyone knew something relevant, he might.”

  Rajendra Shastri. The name was familiar, though not from her Academy days. Not long after Nomad, she had received several subspace messages from him asking when they could meet again and discuss “everything that happened.” She’d had no idea what he was referring to, but she’d felt such intense emotion at the sight of his name that she had avoided responding until she could sort things out.

  She had researched him thereafter, determining that he had been a classmate of hers at the Academy, but had mustered out of Starfleet after a brief tenure, moving to a Federation colony world named Penthara IV. Eventually, concluding that anyone she felt so strongly about deserved at least some response, she had sent Shastri a brief message informing him of her memory loss. His response had been terse, angry, and disbelieving. As she had still been in a vulnerable state in the wake of her trauma, she had been deeply hurt and offended at the suggestion that she would lie about it, so she had deleted all his messages, giving him no further thought.

  That man was one of my friends? she thought with disbelief. The emotions she associated with his name were too bitter, too fraught with betrayal. What kind of friend would turn on her so readily after learning of such a trauma? How could he just dismiss it as a lie?

  “Oh, dear,” said Omar, studying her face. “Per
haps that friendship turned sour somewhere.”

  “I’m sorry,” M’Umbha said. “I fear I’ve upset you.”

  Nyota shook her head. “No, no, it’s all right. I needed to know. Whatever the history is between me and this Shastri, he may still be a lead to the answers I’m seeking. I’m grateful to you for that. If… if only I’d come to you a dozen years ago, maybe I’d already know what was behind all this. Maybe we could even have stopped it sooner.”

  M’Umbha rose. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for this, binti. We all respond in our own way to trauma. What you went through was terrible. You coped the best way you knew how.” She took her daughter’s hands. “I’m just grateful that you had such loyal and caring friends aboard the Enterprise to help you rebuild your life. To help you become the strong, wise, dedicated, and caring woman I see before me.”

  Nyota hugged her. “Oh, Mama. You shaped me too. Even if I don’t remember the events, the knowledge, values, and habits you instilled in me remain. You’ve always been with me—even when I didn’t know it.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Starfleet Academy

  Commander Sulu wore a heavy expression as he entered the classroom, and Zirani Kayros wondered why he was looking at her. She soon got her answer, once the students in the piloting class had fallen silent in response to their instructor’s uncharacteristically somber manner.

  “There’s been a new vacuum flare,” Sulu told the class. “It began a short while ago in the Tiburon system.”

  Kayros gasped. The aftermath of the Midoren City disaster on Denobula had been all over the news for almost a week, so Sulu’s words prompted her to imagine the same calamities befalling her home and family—and her own firsthand experience of the Argelius flare added vivid detail to her imaginings. The rational part of her mind took a moment longer to engage, reminding her of the improbability of two such direct strikes so close together.

  Sulu’s next words, directed mainly at her, reaffirmed this. “The homeworld is fine. It was a large flare, but well removed from the planet and the lunar colonies.” He paused. “However, there were casualties. A civilian transport with twenty-four people aboard was in the vicinity. They were vacationers returning home to Tiburon from a tour of the outer ice giants. They apparently decided to divert closer to the vacuum flare so they could get a better look at it—it’s not clear yet whether it was the pilots’ idea or if the passengers talked them into it. Either way, they didn’t anticipate this flare being larger than the previous ones, so they were caught in a sudden microflare burst. The microflares breached their reactor… the transport was lost with all hands.”

  After a moment, he went on. “The families have already been notified. I guess that means you’re in the clear, Zirani.”

  She nodded, taking it in. There were also friends and classmates to consider, but the odds that two dozen people out of an entire planetary population included anyone she knew were minuscule. Still, she would not truly know until she called home.

  Sulu seemed to divine her thoughts—no doubt because a Starfleet veteran like him had extensive experience with disaster and loss. “If you’d like to be excused from class today, I understand.”

  Kayros cleared her throat. “No, sir. It’s okay. Thank you, though.”

  She did her best to focus on his lesson in celestial navigation, hoping it would make an effective distraction from the news. Still, her mind drifted a few times over the following hour. She thought she’d put her vacuum flare experience at Argelius behind her. It had been three months ago, after all, before the phenomenon had even been named. But this latest incident had struck close to home in more ways than one, it seemed.

  After class, several of Kayros’s fellow students clustered around her to offer support, including Michael Ashrafi, who rubbed her shoulder kindly. “I’m here if you want to talk, Zee. I… probably don’t have anything helpful to say, but I can listen.” She patted his hand briefly, appreciating the gesture.

  Benedick, the outgoing Warborn cadet, was there as well, with Portia hovering beside him like a bodyguard. “I too stand ready to listen, Zirani,” Benedick said, a kindly expression on his jowly, drooping face. “I know how it feels to endure deaths among your people. A number of the Warborn that I was raised alongside did not survive the cryogenic process.”

  Hearing that made her feel guilty. “It’s, ah, it’s okay, Benedick. I doubt they were anybody I knew. Just a random group of tourists. Probably older people.”

  Portia grimaced. “Such folly. To die so carelessly, for no reason.”

  Her words made Kayros bristle. “It doesn’t mean their lives were worth any less!”

  The tough Warborn female’s eyes widened in offended surprise. “That’s what I meant. Life is too valuable a resource to squander so frivolously, out of mere unconcern for an obvious risk. Life should be fought for, protected. It should not be taken for granted or thrown away for no purpose. One’s own or anyone else’s.”

  Portia strode off before a chastened Kayros could decide how to reply. The Warborn continued to surprise her. She felt she’d hit it off well with a few of them, mainly Benedick and Horatio, but Portia had seemed the most cold and hostile one, the Warborn least likely to find a place in Starfleet.

  Now Kayros began to realize what a loss that would be.

  San Francisco

  When Leonard McCoy invited Jim Kirk to dine with him and Ashley Janith-Lau, the admiral was glad for the opportunity to set aside his worries about the burgeoning vacuum flare crisis for an evening. Granted, Janith-Lau was a reminder of the ongoing controversy around the Warborn Arcturians, but that was a milder crisis, and Kirk still had hopes of finding common ground with the charming activist. Mainly, though, he welcomed the chance to see how his old friend and his new friend (or friendly rival, perhaps) were hitting it off. The two of them had been seeing each other for nearly a week now, and while it appeared to be in a relaxed, casual capacity, McCoy certainly seemed happier than Kirk had seen him in quite a while.

  Both Kirk and McCoy were initially a bit awkward with each other in Janith-Lau’s company, embarrassed by their mutual former hope for romance between her and Kirk. But the pediatrician proved a deft peacemaker, her easy, comfortable rapport with both men proving contagious. Soon the three of them were chattering and laughing around the table like lifelong friends.

  It was inevitable, of course, that the conversation eventually came back around to the Warborn. But this time it was a relaxed and open discourse among friends, and Kirk took heart from that.

  “I’ve been researching Arcturian history a lot lately,” Janith-Lau told him. “Trying to get insights into the traditions of the Warborn practice, its specific tenets and how they might have been bent or broken in the past. I’m trying to find out if there are precedents for what I fear Commander Rakatheema is trying to do—to broaden the Warborn’s mandate to fight for the whole Federation.”

  Kirk studied her. “Would it really be so wrong to let them defend the Federation the same way the rest of us do? After all, it’s not like we’re going to reinstitute the Warborn breeding program. These twenty thousand are the only ones of their kind.”

  McCoy spoke up in support of his ladyfriend. “That’s what they say now, Jim. But a hundred years ago, they said they’d never breed any more Warborn at all. Once you make that first compromise, it gets easier to make the next one, and the next, until you forget there used to be a line you wouldn’t cross.”

  Janith-Lau nodded. “I just don’t want to see Starfleet’s purpose go through that same erosion. I don’t believe you do either, Jim. But other Starfleet officers have crossed ethical lines before.”

  Kirk kept his silence. He’d certainly known some who fit the bill—Ben Finney, Ronald Tracey, Antonio Delgado—but he had no desire to impugn his fellow officers in the company of civilians.

  The activist sighed. “To be honest, I’ve gained a lot of admiration for the Arcturians. They found a way to achieve peace among their
own nations far earlier than Earth did, even earlier than Vulcan, and they’ve kept it up for an impressively long time.

  “But the perpetuation of the Warborn practice is the one major blemish that remains. The peace, prosperity, and equality they built for natural-born Arcturians came at the expense of an exploited class. It was a cultural blind spot that they weren’t able to face until Federation contact.”

  “The Warborn filled what was seen as a sacred role in Arcturian culture,” Kirk countered. “That history, that heritage, was woven into their sense of identity. It wasn’t an easy thing for them to let go of, because it was interwoven with so many of their traditions.”

  “I can relate to that,” McCoy said. “I’m a proud Southerner, but I don’t deny that the history of the American South is rooted in slavery and oppression. There was a time, not too many generations ago, when many Southerners did deny it—when they believed that holding on to their heritage meant perpetuating oppression and injustice toward the descendants of former slaves, or living in denial about the oppression that still existed. It was a long, hard struggle to overcome those habits of thought—to find a way to divorce the worthwhile parts of Dixie culture from the parts that deserved to die unloved.”

  “I don’t think the Arcturian situation is quite the same, Bones,” Kirk said. “They saw the Warborn as a necessary evil, but one deserving of respect and gratitude for their sacrifice.”

  Janith-Lau put on a skeptical moue. “The Aztecs felt the same way about the people whose hearts they cut out to appease the sun god.”

  “The Warborn did help them keep the peace, by defending them against outside threats.”

  “Many of those invasions happened because the Warborn existed! Conquerors like Maltuvis couldn’t resist the potential of a quick-bred slave army.”

  “And it’s to the Arcturians’ credit that they committed themselves so religiously to ensuring that never happened. Whatever your concerns about Rakatheema, Ashley, I doubt that one man can change so many centuries of conviction.”