Bethom looked over at Kebron in greeting as the Brikar strode into the lab. “How are we coming, Doctor?” asked Kebron.
“Oh, we’ve barely begun,” Bethom assured him. “Janos’s neural patterns are most unique. There’s no other creature like him in the universe, you know. To try and determine exactly what could be causing these violent mood swings, these fugue periods where he reverts to utter bestiality…oh yes, it could take quite some time. Perhaps it would be best if you returned to your vessel and awaited our assessment.”
“Perhaps it would,” agreed Burgoyne. “However, we have our orders. So we’ll be staying, if you’ve no objections….”
“None at all!” said Christopher with that infuriating cheerfulness.
Kebron slowly approached Janos, who continued to look anywhere else but at him. “How you holding up?” he asked Janos.
He expected some sort of wisecrack, or some pithy, witty remark. Instead Janos fixed his red-eyed gaze upon him and said, so quietly that Kebron almost couldn’t hear him, “I’m not going to make it.”
“Janos,” he asked with immediate concern, “is Bethom…?”
“It’s nothing he’s done,” insisted Janos. “At least…not lately. I just…I just feel it slipping away, Zak. Feel the beast inside me that my…my intellect has kept away. Like a mental dam holding back a flood. But my dam is turning into a sieve. My dam. My embankment. My weir. I’m a weirbeast. See? I can still…”
Then he let out such a terrifying roar that everyone in the place jumped, except for Kebron. But even he took a few steps back.
Janos began to tremble, pulling against the bonds which held him fast. Finally he managed to settle himself down and looked wearily at Kebron. “When I’m gone…when what’s me is gone…do the right thing…”
“Come, come!” called out Bethom. “I’ll have no such talk. Just be strong, Janos. It’s not as dire as you paint it. It will work out fine, you’ll see. So, Mr. Kebron,” Bethom said, clearly eager to change the subject. “What do you think of our facility?”
“Very clean,” commented Kebron. “I’d always thought true scientific geniuses kept their laboratories in a great deal of disarray.”
“An unclean lab is the first indicator of an unclean mind,” Bethom said primly. Over on a nearby lab table, the gribble was perched, scavenging around in a small pile of food that seemed to exist primarily of leftovers from people’s meals. The gribble didn’t seem to mind, cheerfully gnawing away. He reached over absently and petted it.
“And Dr. Bethom,” added Dr. Christopher, “has a very clean mind.”
“Yes, so I’ve noticed,” said Kebron. “You stated as much in your official journal entries.”
“Ah, so you’ve been reading those,” Christopher said. He didn’t sound the least bit uneasy about it.
Nevertheless, Kebron watched him carefully as he replied, “Yes. Yes, I have.”
“Well, we’ve nothing to hide.”
“So you say. Yet I’ve found something a bit curious.”
Bethom looked up from his work, his eyebrows raised. “Have you?”
“Yes. You see…in studying Dr. Christopher’s journal, I notice that in your first month here, his journal is filled with all sorts of cautions and concerns regarding erratic behavior on your part. How some days you seem calm, and on others, you’re almost impossible to control.”
“Really.” Bethom shrugged. “I suppose everyone has a period of adjustment.”
“Indeed. Yours, it seems, was exactly twenty-seven days. Because on the twenty-eighth day, his journal turns completely around. Suddenly he has nothing but effusive praise for you. ‘Dr. Bethom is an asset to this institute and to science.’”
“Isn’t that kind!” smiled Bethom. “Doctor, you shouldn’t have!”
“I was simply expressing my sincere opinion,” said Christopher.
But Burgoyne was looking at Kebron with concern, as was Selar. “Lieutenant…is there something else?”
“As a matter of fact, there is,” Kebron said, accessing his tricorder. “From that point on, there’s nothing but continued kind words. Not the slightest doubt is expressed over the doctor’s activities. As a matter of fact, the specifics of the activities are not even spelled out. Or mentioned. At all.”
“That,” said Selar to Christopher, “is a rather shocking lapse of protocol, Doctor.”
“We have a great deal going on here, Doctor,” replied Christopher. “We’re more thorough at some times than at others….”
“Dr. Bethom is an asset to this institute and to science,” Kebron read out.
“Yes,” said Bethom, his smile looking slightly more pinched this time. “Yes, we know what Dr. Christopher wrote….”
“This wasn’t Dr. Christopher’s entry. This was Dr. Malloy’s entry,” Kebron said. “Entered on the exact same day as Dr. Christopher’s.” When silence greeted this pronouncement, Kebron continued, “I also have Dr. Zimmerman’s entry. And Dr. Margolin’s. The precise same wording, on the same day. And here’s something even more curious: The next day’s entry is also word-for-word across the board. Different, but all the same. And the entry after that, and the entry after that, and so on and so on. I wonder what today’s entry will say.”
Slowly Selar and Burgoyne began to back away from Bethom. Burgoyne pulled out hir phaser.
Bethom’s face was blank, but his eyes were dark and fearsome. “They’ll likely say that some Starfleet officers asked too many questions.”
Instantly Burgoyne slapped hir combadge. “Excalibur, emergency beam—” and suddenly s/he winced, almost doubling over as a high-pitched electronic screech emanated from the combadge. Selar, her hearing even sharper than hirs, staggered, grabbing her ears in a desperate and futile attempt to shut out the whining.
On the lab table, Janos was watching without movement. Then he emitted a low growl and started to struggle. But the bonds held fast.
“I don’t think so,” said Bethom to the Starfleet officers. “I don’t think you’ll be emergency beaming out of anywhere. Not with our security scrambler in place. No communications. And our energy dampener should nicely render your phaser weapons little more than decorative paperweights. We’re state-of-the-art here. We control who stays and who goes and who does what to whom.”
“Oh, really,” said Kebron. “Control this.” He lumbered toward Bethom, flexing and unflexing his fingers, clearly ready to break Bethom in half the moment he got his hands on him.
“All right,” Bethom said without hesitation, and he tapped a panel on the nearby control console.
A door so seamless that he hadn’t even spotted it in the wall suddenly slid open a few feet away. There was darkness from within, and suddenly a screech like a hundred discordant violins. Something that looked a great deal like Janos, except larger and fiercer and with claws that were the biggest Kebron had ever seen, barreled into the room, vaulted the distance with one powerful thrust of its legs, and slammed into Kebron.
Kebron had taken any number of hits before in his time, but he’d never felt anything like this. It shuddered through his powerful body, and he tried to steady himself, but the thing was everywhere, its claws at his face, its legs wrapped back and around his knees, and suddenly Kebron was tumbling backward. He hit the ground so heavily that the vibrations through the floor knocked Doctors Bethom and Christopher off their feet.
Instantly Burgoyne started toward Bethom, determined to rip him to shreds if he didn’t put a stop to this immediately.
And that was when s/he realized that whatever that creature was that had sprinted out from the darkness to attack Kebron…
…it had friends.
Lots of them.
Then
Calhoun didn’t quite know what to expect when he returned to the quarters he shared with Shelby. Would she give him the silent treatment? Would she just start shouting at him? He suspected it would be one or the other; there didn’t seem to be a great deal of room to negotiate. The problem w
as that he didn’t know which was preferable.
He wondered if he should apologize. But he didn’t know what he could possibly apologize for. It would be hypocritical, because he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. But if he didn’t, then she’d probably just continue to be angry about the whole matter. And really, would it mean anything to him to tell her he was sorry? But if he wasn’t truly sorry, then how could he in good conscience say that he was? Wouldn’t that be instilling a big fat lie into their relationship?
It was beginning to look like his decision to annihilate the Kobayashi Maru was the easiest one he’d made that day.
Word of how he had resolved the situation had gotten around the Academy at even faster speeds than usual. To his surprise, most of the cadets he encountered grinned and said helpful things like “Well done. Someone should have blown that damned freighter out of space years ago.” They seemed to be amused by it…but also appeared to appreciate the fact that he had placed such a high priority on his crew’s safety, and also was willing to make difficult decisions where others might well have faltered.
After much wandering punctuated by a variety of discussions with “fans” of his work, he finally steeled his nerve and headed back to his quarters. He touched the chime, figuring that protocol dictated asking Shelby’s permission to be let in, despite the fact that he was as entitled to be there as she was.
“Yes?” said Shelby from the other side of the door.
She doesn’t sound mad. Probably because she doesn’t know it’s me. “It’s me,” Calhoun called.
“Oh,” she replied, and then, “Well, what are you standing out there for?”
He let out a huge sigh of relief. There was a very slight, almost frazzled edge to her voice, but she certainly didn’t sound angry at him. “Just wanted to make certain I’m not intruding.”
“No. Not at all.”
The door slid open and he walked in, and stared as he saw Shelby in the middle of the room, her suitcases opened on the bed. They were filled with her clothes. She pointed to the closet and said, “Be a dear and get the last of my things out of there, would you?”
Looking and feeling numb, Calhoun did as she asked, pulling out the clothes and handing them to her. He stood there dumbly as she tucked them neatly into the suitcase. Everything was precisely and perfectly arranged. He’d never seen such organized luggage in his life.
“What are you doing?” he managed to say finally.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Packing.”
“Actually,” she said with a triumphant closing of the suitcase, “past tense. Packed.”
“But why?”
“I’m going home, Mac.”
“Is…someone sick? Your parents…?”
“They’re fine,” she said easily.
“I…don’t understand then. It’s not the end of the semester. Why would you leave? We graduate in a few…”
“‘We’ aren’t doing anything. You’re graduating. I’m leaving.”
“No!”
“I don’t see,” she said, “where it’s any of your business.”
“This is about the test! The Kobayashi Maru! You’re doing this to get back at me, aren’t you,” he demanded. “To make me feel badly. All right, fine, it worked. I feel badly. Satisfied? The point’s been made.” He reached for the nearest suitcase. “Now let’s unpack this and—”
“Get away from it!” she called out angrily, and batted at his hands. He withdrew them, looking as confused as he felt. “Mac, I’m leaving, and that’s all there is to it.”
“But I don’t…” He’d never felt so helpless. “Why?”
“Because,” she said, “my evaluation on the Kobayashi Maru is not going to be everything I’d hoped.”
“And they’re making you leave because of that?”
“No,” she said patiently, “I’m making me leave because of that. Me, Calhoun. My decision. Don’t worry, though. I’ll be back. I’ve decided to repeat my fourth year here. But I’d rather start fresh. Just begin over again next year rather than see this one through.”
“This isn’t making any sense.”
“It’s making perfect sense, Mac. I spoke with the professors and told them this was how I felt, and they agreed it would probably be the best thing.”
“But I’ll be gone!”
Like a knife in his heart, she said, “Yes.”
“Then…then I’ll repeat my fourth year, too.”
“You’ve no reason to. Your grades aren’t exemplary but they are good enough, your evaluations…”
“Let’s see how great my evaluations are when I go and punch in a teacher’s face.”
“Don’t you dare!” For a moment her careful veneer of calm slipped and the raw emotion roiling beneath was visible. With great effort she controlled herself. “That’s not how this plays out, Mac. I leave. You stay. I graduate next year. You graduate this year.”
“But that wasn’t the plan.”
“The best laid plans of mice and men oft gone a’gly.”
“What?”
“Look it up,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll have much more spare time without me around to distract you.”
“You were never a distraction.”
“Then I guess I wasn’t trying hard enough, was I.”
She clicked shut the suitcases and heaved them off the bed. He stood between her and the door. “Mac,” she said in exasperation. “Move, would you?”
“This wasn’t the plan,” he told her, trying to make her understand. “We…we were going to be assigned somewhere together. We were going to be a team. We were going to get married…”
“Married?” She laughed. “Since when did you ever propose?”
“I…I just always felt that you were my fiancée. Ever since our first time.”
“You told me you didn’t hold to that old Xenexian custom.”
“I lied,” he said. “We’re supposed to be together.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘supposed to,’ Calhoun. There’s just ‘is.’ And this is the way it is.”
She tried to push past him to the door and he took her by the shoulders so fiercely she dropped her bags. “How can you do this?” he demanded heatedly.
“Let go!”
“How?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do, dammit, and if you weren’t a pigheaded barbarian from a backwater planet, you’d understand that!”
He released her as if she were on fire and stepped back. “Is that what you think of me?”
“I’m going now,” she said, grabbing her bags.
“I did this for you,” he said. “All of it. For you. You have no idea…no clue…”
“Calhoun, for once and for all, I think you’re the one who doesn’t have a damned clue. Look…” For an instant her voice broke and then she composed it. “The timing stinks, okay? We’re not ready to be a couple. I’m not ready to graduate. You’re not ready to be a husband. The only thing I’m sure of that’s ready is that you’re ready to get out of here and start your career. You have to do what’s right for you and I have to do what’s right for me.”
“But…this isn’t right for you…”
“Sorry, Calhoun. That’s one decision you don’t get to make. Now are you going to get out of the way or do you wind up wearing one of these bags?”
He stepped to one side without a word. She headed for the door. She stopped only when he said very softly, “I thought we were going to get married.”
She took a deep breath, faced him, and said, “Think again.”
And she was out the door and gone, her footsteps echoing behind her.
He sagged down onto the bed. His mind couldn’t process what had just happened. It had to be some sort of elaborate joke on her part. That was it. Just…some way of getting back at him, because she was just that upset. All right, he could understand that. He could even appreciate it. He would just wait for her to come back. He’d wait right here. r />
And she’d be back.
That was definite. Just…any moment now…
He sat there for a long, long time. Outside the afternoon shadows stretched to evening, and he remained right where he was, waiting for her to return.
And the entire time he did so, he knew perfectly well that she wasn’t coming back. But the longer he pretended she was, the longer he didn’t have to deal with the fact that she wasn’t.
Eventually he heard a soft beeping from the computer console and he realized he had a message waiting.
It was her. It had to be.
He crossed quickly over to it and said, “Play message.”
The computer snapped on, and a voice came out of it.
“Hello, M’k’n’zy,” said C’n’daz’s voice. It was so unexpected that he couldn’t quite understand what he was hearing at first. “Did you think I’d forget? Perhaps you don’t take a blood challenge seriously, but I do. And so does everyone else on Xenex. I thought you’d want to know that your brother has fled our world, taking refuge on Danter. Isn’t that just too perfect. He’d fled because, although it’s taken time, I’ve made sure that everyone on Xenex knows just what a coward you are not to face me, and no one is willing to trust the Calhoun line anymore. Not you. Not any of your house. Not—”