Kathryn frowned, and Chakotay worried for a moment that he was going to have to engage in a battle of wills—something he preferred to avoid, seeing as he was as tired as the captain. Then her combadge piped. “Sickbay to Captain Janeway.” The voice was familiar, if not the confused tone.
Kathryn smiled. “Go ahead, Doctor. We’ve missed you. Well, parts of you.”
“What happened to me, Captain?”
“Let’s discuss that later,” Chakotay interrupted. “After you go down to the transporter room and see to Seven and B’Elanna.”
“Ah, they’re back, then. Are we free of the fold?”
“We’re not sure exactly what happened yet, Doctor. I’ll be convening a meeting…” The muscle under Kathryn’s right eye twitched and she reached up to wearily rub at the tired muscle. Seeming to realize what she was doing, the captain lowered her hand and stared at it thoughtfully for a beat. “After I’ve rested,” she said softly. “After we’ve all rested.”
“An excellent plan, Captain. Sickbay out.”
Looking up at Chakotay, Kathryn asked, “Would you object if I at least stopped by sickbay on the way to my cabin to see how B’Elanna and Seven are doing?”
“Do you really want to hear Seven cursing?”
“I confess I’m curious.”
Chakotay considered the option. “Come to think of it, so am I.”
Kathryn turned back to the bridge, scanned to see who was on duty, and finally said, “Mr. Paris, the bridge is yours.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When Tuvok returns, tell him he’s to relieve you so you can visit…” Kathryn stopped then, and Chakotay saw a look in her eyes that he knew meant, No, wait. Tuvok would never believe that…Instead, she tapped her combadge and said, “Janeway to Tuvok.”
Three seconds of silence passed, two of which felt perfectly normal, but the last seemed like an eternity.
“Janeway to Tuvok,” Kathryn repeated.
Another three seconds passed, and then a voice came over the comm. “Captain Janeway, this is Kim. Tuvok is on his way to sickbay.”
“On my way, Harry.”
Chakotay sighed and followed his captain, thinking, No rest for the weary.
* * *
Kaytok appreciated how everything on the Voyagers’ vessel smelled clean. Unfortunately, this pleasure led him to wonder what these well-scrubbed others must think of his own scent. His experiences of the past several minutes—free fall followed by dematerialization—had not helped the situation. Perhaps if he asked politely, there would be time for a bath later.
For now, though, Kaytok was content to follow Seven and B’Elanna (still speaking in overlapping sentences) through the wide, antiseptic corridors, in and then out of tiny, humming elevators, to the sickbay. Their guide, a roundish, hairy fellow, informed Kaytok that there would be a surprise waiting for him at journey’s end. Kaytok hoped it was a hot meal.
It was not. Three Monorhans dressed in military garb, all of them glaring at him, stood clustered around a fourth who was lying on a table. This supine figure lifted his head and stared at Kaytok questioningly, then asked in a raspy voice, “Who are you?”
Unsure what manner of situation he had just walked into, Kaytok took a single step forward and stopped at the foot of the bed. Surprisingly, the three around the table took a half-step back, opening up a space that felt like a stage. “I’m Kaytok.”
The patient struggled to rise, but the table on which he lay was too narrow. Seeing his trouble, two of the patient’s hara lifted him so he could look at Kaytok levelly. “I’ve heard of you,” he said. “Sem mentioned your name.”
Kaytok watched the hara exchange anxious glances. A newly honed sense of self-preservation began to jangle in his ears. “Sem?” He looked around. “She’s here?”
“On this ship, yes,” the harat replied. “In the brig, I’m told.”
“That’s like a jail, right?” The harat nodded. Kaytok said, “Good!”
The harat smiled weakly, then said, “We should talk later, but I have to rest now.” He looked around at the faces of his hara. “I’m still not convinced any of this is real.”
“You and I both,” Kaytok muttered.
At a third table, an erect individual with a bare pate was helping a smaller individual lift a third figure off a floating stretcher. Noting the blinking lights and readouts, Kaytok decided the tables were some kind of diagnostic device.
When the smaller individual was finished helping put the unconscious one onto the diagnostic table, he turned to look at Kaytok’s companions and called out, “Seven, B’Elanna—great work down there!”
B’Elanna replied, “Your work was also exemplary, Ensign.”
Seven punched him on the arm in what Kay interpreted to be a playful gesture and said, “Way to go, Harry.”
The one called Harry rubbed his arm where Seven had hit him and stared at them. Leaning forward, he studied the appliance around B’Elanna’s eye. “We didn’t get back to the right universe,” he said.
“You did, Harry,” B’Elanna said. “Fear not. Some things happened on Monorha.” Nodding toward the supine form, she asked, “What happened to Tuvok?”
Harry shook his head. “I don’t know. Shock, the Doc says. He collapsed when we emerged from the fold. Some kind of psionic feedback maybe.”
Two more individuals rushed into Sickbay, which was rapidly feeling very crowded. They, too, congratulated the returned Voyagers and complimented Harry on his work, though Kaytok also sensed some discontent with how his predictions worked out. Seeing how the others treated the newcomers, Kaytok guessed that the small female was the Voyagers’ rih.
Wishing to remain out of the way (everyone was clustering around the stricken fellow, though the bald one was trying to push them all away), Kaytok found a cushioned seat in a small office and sat down, then leaned his head against the wall and fell asleep.
He was asleep, he thought, for no more than a second or two when someone touched his shoulder. “Sorry,” Kaytok said, his tongues moving thickly. “Guess I can’t sleep here.”
“You can sleep later,” the other said. “But I need you awake now, Kay.”
Kay? No one outside his family ever called him that. Well, his family and…Sem?! Kaytok’s eyes snapped open. A Monorhan stood beside him, though it was not Sem. “Why is it so dark?” Kaytok asked. “What happened to everyone?” Then, squinting, he studied the old, lined face of the figure limned in shadow and found to his great surprise that he recognized it. “Gora?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gora said. “Hello. We don’t have much time, and there are some things I need to tell you…”
Chapter 19
“We’re not finished here,” the captain said, looking down at the arc of Monorha from her ready-room window. From where she stood, B’Elanna could only see the white crescent of the planet’s northern ice pack and a smudge of ocean. Twelve hours ago, a whole three hours after the last nanoprobe was flushed from her system, Captain Janeway had asked B’Elanna to start thinking about ways they might be able to revitalize Monorha’s ecosystem. Melting the ice pack with phaser fire from orbit had been one of the few viable options that her team had proposed. The method also had the virtue of being quick, though not knowing how their efforts would pan out bothered her.
Focusing back on the moment, she replied, “No, of course we’re not. We never are.”
Captain Janeway turned to look at her chief engineer, and B’Elanna sensed she was being watched carefully. “What are you thinking, B’Elanna?” the captain asked softly.
Torres decided to answer truthfully. “That some might argue we don’t know what happens to all the worlds we visit and leave our mark on. Others might say we have a responsibility to see things through….”
“What do you say, B’Elanna?”
Recalling her conversation with Kaytok, B’Elanna plunged ahead. “That we need to be careful, very careful, not only for our sake, but for the sakes of the people we
encounter.”
Turning to look back out her window, the captain asked, a slight note of worry in her voice, “Do you think we broke the Prime Directive?”
B’Elanna pondered that one for several seconds before answering. “I’m not a debater, Captain. Or a lawyer if it came to that, but this time I’d say probably not.”
“This time? Have there been times?”
“Yes.”
“More than once?”
“Yes, ma’am. But there’s something else I’d like to add.”
“And that is?”
“Every time you did it, every time you broke the Prime Directive, you were right to do it. The planet where it happened was better for it.” Torres had been thinking about the topic a lot over the past several hours, had even discussed it with Tom last night after their reunion, but before sleep. “Here’s what I think: The Prime Directive is in place to protect planets and cultures from bad decisions being made by…you’ll forgive the term…average ship captains. By people like me—people who act before they think. But there’s a few, Captain Janeway, people like you or like Chakotay or, I think someday, Harry Kim, who always know the right thing to do. Or who make it right.” She hesitated, wondering how much more she should say. “I can’t pretend I understand all this, but there are captains and then there are captains.”
“And you think I’m one of the latter.” Captain Janeway turned back to B’Elanna, her face softly underlit by the stars.
“Yes, ma’am. I do.”
The left corner of the captain’s mouth curled up ever so slightly before she turned away. “You realize, of course, that Starfleet Command would never see it that way.”
“I figure that’s a problem we’ll deal with when we get home.”
“When? Not if?”
“It might take a while,” B’Elanna said, figuring she was allowed to slip in one jab. “If we keep taking the scenic route. On the other hand, I decided that home…home is where the hara is.”
“And yours is here.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She found herself thinking of Tom and Harry, Chakotay and Neelix, and, yes, even the Doctor. My hara, she thought. And there stands my harat. Or is it haras? She had never quite figured out the gender assignments.
“How are you feeling?” Janeway asked, changing the subject. “Since becoming unlinked?”
“Fine,” B’Elanna said. “The Doctor said all the nanoprobes died off after Seven completed a regeneration cycle. Something about changing the resonance signature—I’m not sure I got it all. One minute she was here in my head and the next, poof, she was gone.” She shook her head and smiled.
“Sounds like it was quite an experience,” Janeway remarked.
“Not one I’d care to repeat,” B’Elanna said, “but it was very strange feeling so intimately bound to someone…feeling like I belonged. I think I understand the Borg a little better now.”
“Then I’d say the experience was worthwhile. We may need to call on that knowledge someday.”
B’Elanna nodded uncertainly, thinking of that last moment before she and Seven had been severed from one another. She had not thought to say anything more, but then, somehow, she found herself saying, “There was one other thing, Captain. Something about Seven.”
“What’s that?” the captain ask, sounding worried in that maternal way she sometimes did.
“She’s very…alone,” B’Elanna said. “Actually, ‘alone’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. Just before the Doctor cut us off from each other, I felt it…for just a second. I don’t know if Seven even thinks about it or is aware of it, but…” She stopped, struggling to find the words to describe the sensation.
“Go on,” the captain said.
“I don’t know if I can. It’s just a feeling. I used to think of myself as very alone, very isolated before…” She shrugged. “You know.”
“Before Tom.”
“Right. But now I know, I didn’t understand what isolated meant. This is what I got from Seven: There’s everything else and everyone else in the universe and then there’s her.”
“Isn’t that true for all of us?” Captain Janeway asked.
“It didn’t used to be,” B’Elanna said. “Not for her.”
“But she chose this.”
“Yes, she did, and I think she would agree that it was the better choice, but, well, I guess I just wanted to say I understand something about what it cost her.”
The captain turned back to the window, reached up, and laid her palm lightly on the barrier. Speaking softly, she said, “Well, then, I guess there’s another thing we all learned.” She did not speak for what seemed a very long time. B’Elanna shuffled her feet slightly, and the captain came back from wherever she had gone. “Your friend Kaytok says he has something he wants to give me. Have you heard of this Key to Gremadia?”
“He told me about it…well, someone told Seven about it, and then after all the excitement was over, the things that Kaytok told me and the things Seven knew all coalesced. The Key was supposedly lost, but not really. Kaytok’s family had it and now he wants to give it to you.”
“Because his grandfather who left the planet fifty years ago came to him in a dream and told him to do it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” B’Elanna said, trying not to sound too skeptical. “That would seem to cover it.”
“And can you, Lieutenant, think of any reason I should accept this gift?”
B’Elanna considered, then replied, “Because I trust Kaytok. He’s a remarkably sane and centered individual. And because we both know this is far from the strangest thing anyone has ever asked us to do.”
Captain Janeway inhaled deeply, then sighed. “Well,” she said, “you have me there.”
* * *
Sitting by Tuvok’s bedside, Neelix certainly had to concede that the Vulcan looked as good as ever. “Psychic shock”—whatever it was—didn’t seem to have left any scars. The commander was back to being his usual irascible, punctilious self.
“Doctor,” Tuvok said. “I must protest. I am completely recovered.”
“Fortunately,” the Doctor retorted, “I am the physician. I am not an unreasonable man, Commander. I ask only that you finish out the day of observation. If no further symptoms of your mal de tête become evident, you may return to duty.”
Tuvok folded his arms over his chest.
“Oh, come now, Tuvok,” Neelix said trying to be helpful. “Look on the positive side: a little bed rest, a chance to do some reading and meditating.” Neelix observed the Vulcan’s left eyebrow rise a half-centimeter. Ah, acceptance. “And I’ll make you a special meal. I’ve been experimenting with a new kind of tortilla flour that I think would make an exceptional bean burrito.”
The eyebrow rose another half-centimeter. “With guacamole?” Tuvok asked.
Neelix grinned extravagantly. “I think that could be arranged.”
* * *
In their quarters, Ziv, Mol, Shet, Diro, and Jara sat on the floor around a low table set with candles, a loaf of crusty bread provided by the ever-helpful Neelix and a small bottle of thin liquor the humans called vodka. Jara had been the one to suggest the short service of remembrance and thanksgiving, and though Ziv had not felt much in the mood, he couldn’t deny his hara. Now, though, his head spinning in a pleasant combination of drink and weariness, Ziv was glad they had done this.
Jara, ever watchful of his captain’s mood, asked, “Are you all right, sir?”
Ziv clicked soothingly and replied, “Tired, Jara. Mostly just tired.” He sipped a little more of the vodka, and marveled again at how similar it was to Monorhan ahee. He understood from Neelix that it too was distilled from a kind of grain. Smacking his lips, he savored the dry, spicy snap, then added, “And worried. When we return, we will need to speak to many sad mothers and fathers, many angry lovers and friends. Many have died, yet we still live.”
“And yet there is the promise of a new life,” Shet said, raising his glass slightly in salute. “Whi
ch is something you should discuss with your faithful hara someday.” The others all clicked in agreement.
“There is very little to tell,” Ziv said. “I was the shi-harat, the faithful guard, but Sem was not content with that.” Lowering his head, he continued, “And I was weak. I would prefer not to say any more.”
“You are not the first shi-harat, man or woman, who weakened in that manner,” Mol said, trying to reassure, though he sensed his hara’s disappointment.
“Nor the first man Sem has manipulated,” Diro added.
“True,” Ziv said. “I learned a great deal from Kaytok. He is an interesting fellow.”
“Do you believe his story?” Mol asked. “Could he have spoken to Gora?”
Ziv bobbed his head uncertainly. “He believes he did, which is the important thing. And now he intends to give the Key to Gremadia to someone. ‘To her,’ Gora told him.”
“Without being more specific about who the ‘her’ was,” Jara said.
“Correct.”
“One would think a spectral presence might be more specific,” Diro said, slurring his words slightly.
The youngster has changed, Ziv thought. “One would,” he agreed, then raised his glass to his lips. “But I have told Kaytok all I know of Sem, everything she has done.”
“Everything?” Mol asked. “To someone outside the tribe?”
“It seemed necessary.”
“And he will do the right thing?”
Ziv set his empty glass on the table. “Let us hope so, my hara.”
* * *
“So you’ve always had the Key?” Sem asked.
Kaytok turned away from the brig cell and looked out the large window, once again enthralled by the view of his world…how far below? Seven had told him at some point and the translator had done an admirable job of transforming the units so the distance meant something to him, but he couldn’t recall what the number was. A long way, he decided. Pressing one hand against the “window,” he marveled at how solid and real the forcefield felt. The things these people could teach me, he thought, not for the first time.