Текст книги "Twilight "

Автор книги: David George

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

They sat for a while in a comfortable silence. When she heard light taps at the window, Kasidy looked up. Small, clear droplets had started to collect on the glass. “It’s raining,” she said.

“Yeah,” Nog said. “Choritzing.”

“What?” The word meant nothing to her.

“Choritzing,”Nog repeated. “The Ferengi have a hundred seventy-eight words for rain. This—” He pointed toward the window. “—is choritzing.”

“Oh,” Kasidy said. “Okay.” They sat and watched as some of the drops grew heavy enough that gravity pulled them sliding down the window. “I like the rain,” she said.

“Me too,” Nog said. “It reminds me of home. Back on Ferenginar.” Kasidy looked over at him, and he suddenly smiled broadly at her. “So what are you going to name the baby?” he asked. Kasidy smiled back at him. This was a question Nog asked her with some regularity, the joke between them being that almost every time he asked, she gave him a different answer.

“Well,” she said, “if it’s a girl, Octavia Lynn.”

“Okay. Maybe a little too hew-mon,but okay,” he said, pleasantly teasing her. “And what if it’s Jake’s brother?”

“Half-brother,” she corrected.

“How can you have half a brother?” Nog asked.

“Ben is Jake’s father,” Kasidy explained, “and he’ll be the baby’s father—”

“Right,” Nog interrupted. “So they’ll be brothers.”

“But Jake and the baby will have different mothers,” she forged ahead, “so they’ll be half-brothers.”

“How can you have halfa brother?” Nog repeated, but she thought from the expression on his face that he was kidding her. “Hew-mons,”he said again, rolling his eyes, and they both laughed. When she finally told him her current choice for a boy’s name—Marcus Dax—he playfully suggested that Marcus Nog might be a better option.

They talked for a long time after that, about her solitary life on Bajor, and about his work on Defiant,and about Colonel Kira and Dr. Bashir and Quark and other people. They even spoke more about Jake, and also about Ben, in a way that she thought neither one of them had in a long time: without frustration or sadness, but with the simple joys of love and remembrance. They sipped at their tea and hot chocolate—Kasidy refilled their cups twice—and nibbled on the teacakes, which Nog also salted. When they finally rose from their chairs so that Kasidy could show Nog around the house, she thought that she felt stronger and more positive than she had in a very long time. And for his part, whatever had been troubling Nog when he had arrived seemed to have left him as well, as least for the time being.

As they were leaving the front room, Kasidy stopped and looked down at Nog. “Thank you for coming,” she said to him. He smiled up at her, and then she showed him the rest of the house that she and Ben and Jake had built.

14

Thirishar ch’Thane snapped the panel back into place and stood up. He bent over the console, touched a sequence of controls, and watched as the level-five diagnostic ran through its automated functions. Words and numbers flew across the display too rapidly to be read, and the testing sequence signaled its completion with a beep a moment later. A readout appeared on the screen, and Shar tapped a touchpad with a long, slender finger, scrolling through the list of system checks and verifying their outcomes. As with the previous four diagnostics he had executed today on the stellar cartography lab’s secondary interfaces, the results all showed green. But the information he most sought, the time required to run the diagnostic, appeared at the bottom of the list: two point three seconds.

Success,Shar thought. He quickly downloaded the testing data to a padd, packed the engineering tools away into their compartment, and left the lab, headed for Defiant’s airlock. For whatever reasons, the installation of the new stellar cartography lab had given the refit crews more difficulties than any other system during the past few months. The primary systems had passed their final checks only a week ago, and the secondaries just within the last three days. Shar had not been satisfied with the data flow rate, though, and when all of the other refit and repair work had been finished, earlier today, he had decided to make one more attempt to improve performance. Now, at the end of his shift, he had finally achieved his goal.

As he walked through the main port corridor toward the airlocks at Defiant’s bow, he found the ship not only eerily quiet, but unusually still. In dock, neither the impulse engines nor the warp drive were engaged, of course, but gone too were the sounds and disturbances produced by a ship filled with engineering and maintenance staffs. Most of the crew had left Defiantabout midafternoon, he knew, encouraged by Commander Vaughn to spend their last night before the mission relaxing.

Nearly empty as the ship was, the lighting in the corridors had been dimmed, and although Shar knew it not to be true, the air felt colder and drier to him than it usually did. He experienced such reactions sometimes when he had been in the ship’s or the station’s environment for an extended period. It caused him no real trouble, but simply made him uncomfortable. The temperature and humidity maintained aboard the ship matched those on the station, which in turn matched those considered optimal on Bajor. He could always tolerate the conditions—he had certainly become more accustomed to them during his years at Starfleet Academy and on the U.S.S. Tamberlaine—but sometimes he looked forward anxiously to returning to his quarters, where he could regulate the environment according to his own preferences.

For more reasons than that, though, he wished he could go to his quarters right now. Tonight, he would be having dinner with Zhavey,at her request. He did not want to, really, because he knew what she hoped to accomplish by such a meeting: to convince him to return to Andor and take part in his shelthreth.Under other circumstances, he might have summoned the will to decline her invitation, but in just fifteen hours, he knew, he would be heading to the Gamma Quadrant for three months, where he would easily be able to avoid her attempts at coercion.

As he neared Defiant’s airlocks, he recalled the relief he had felt weeks ago when he had learned that Zhaveyhad left the station, bound for Bajor aboard Mjolnir.And when he had found out that Kree-thai,the Andorian vessel assigned to her for diplomatic missions, had departed the station a few days after that, he had assumed that she would not be coming back to DS9. But two days ago, she had returned here aboard Gryphon,and earlier today, Kree-thaihad returned as well. He assumed that meant that she would soon be leaving aboard her ship, either back to Andor or to the Federation Council chambers on Earth. He had not been surprised when she had asked him to dinner, realizing that, no matter her agenda, she would want to say goodbye to him. And as much as he disagreed with her on some issues, Shar loved Zhavey,and he hoped that they could part on pleasant terms.

As he started into the airlock, Lieutenant Candlewood strode in his direction from Defiant’s main starboard corridor. “Calling it a day, Ensign?” the computer specialist asked. He wore his dark brown hair in tight ringlets about his head, his aquiline nose his most distinguishing feature.

“Yes, sir,” Shar said, stopping and waiting for the lieutenant to reach him. When he did, they walked side by side through Defiant’s open airlock.

“Do you think she’s ready?” Candlewood asked, patting the ship’s bulkhead just before they stepped across the threshold separating the ship and the station. Even after all his years among humans, their proclivity for referring to space vessels with a feminine pronoun perplexed him.

“Yes, sir, I do,” Shar told him.

They reached the end of the station’s airlock, and Candlewood worked the control panel to open the hatch. They stepped down into the docking ring, the hatch rolling back into place behind them. A Starfleet security guard, whom Shar recognized but whose name he did not know, nodded as they passed. Shar and Candlewood entered the nearest turbolift together, and Shar waited until the lieutenant had specified his destination in the habitat ring before stating his own.

“So, are you going to relax tonight, Ensign,” Candlewood asked, smiling, “or have a last wild night before we ship out for a quarter of a year?” Shar understood that the question must have been intended as a joke, although the point of the humor eluded him. He answered in the only way he knew how to: seriously.

“I’ll be having a…busy…night, sir,” he said, thinking of the possibly difficult hours with Zhaveythat lay ahead. The turbolift stopped and the door opened. The lieutenant looked over and smiled, apparently believing that Shar had meant something other than he actually had.

“Well, just be ready tomorrow morning,” Candlewood said as he exited the lift. “It’s going to be a long mission.”

“Yes, sir,” Shar told him. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Shar stood at the door to Zhavey’s quarters and tried to think of a good reason not to enter. Several occurred to him, but none compelling enough to act upon. He knew what the next few hours would likely bring—if he could last that long—but considering that he would not be seeing Zhaveyfor a long time after tonight, he felt that he owed her the show of respect and love that he truly had for her. He promised himself to be attentive to her in their time together, to try not only to listen to her arguments but to avoid patronizing her with simple acknowledgments, as he had during their last couple of encounters. He had thought through the choices he had made in his life many times—and still continued to do so—but he would try tonight to listen to Zhaveywith a new ear. He had committed to the course of his life right now, and he did not see himself returning to Andor any time soon, but he wanted to demonstrate for her the regard she deserved not only as his zhaveybut as the wise, strong woman she was.

Shar took a deep breath, and then coughed, the cool, stale air catching in his throat. If nothing else, at least he would get to spend the evening in a physical atmosphere more to his liking. He lifted a hand to the signal panel beside the door and hesitated. He looked down and realized that he still carried the padd he had brought from Defiant.He thought briefly about taking it to his quarters, but recognized the thought as a poor excuse to delay the inevitable. One of his antennae tingled as he stood there, and he reached up and scratched at its base through his thick mop of hair. He suddenly thought of Thriss—her willowy form, her lovely face, her long, straight hair—and decided he had been thinking too much about this. He should go inside before he ended up doing Zhavey’s work for her.

Shar stabbed at the signal panel. Almost immediately, the door glided open. Charivretha stood at the far end of the room, between the window and the doorway to the bedroom.

“Come in, Thirishar,” she said, a smile decorating her features as he had not seen in a long time. He stepped inside, at once aware of the satisfying increase in the temperature and moisture content of the air.

“Good evening, Zhavey,”Shar said. He moved farther into the room, toward a nearby table, where he intended to put down his padd. “Thank you for inviting—”

Somebody’s behind me.Shar sensed the presence via his antennae, back and to his left. He whirled, and in that moment before he saw the person, he realized that the electromagnetic signature he had detected belonged not just to anybody, but to an Andorian—and not to just any Andorian. Standing in the shadows in the front corner of the room stood a tall figure, with a rugged appearance, his hair in long, tight locks like Shar’s, but pulled back tightly against his head and tied together.

At first, Shar did not recognize his bondmate, encountering him in this context. And then he did. Stunned, he said, “Anichent.”

“Hello, Shar,” Anichent said, smiling. He walked out of the corner and embraced Shar. For a moment, Shar stood there, his arms at his sides, not knowing what to think, what to feel. And then his hands came up around Anichent’s back, and he hugged his bondmate close. He had not seen him in person in—

How long?Shar asked himself. He did not know. He had also not known until that instant how much he had missed Anichent. The surge of emotion surprised Shar, and he held on tightly to his bondmate for long moments. Finally, they pulled back and regarded each other. Shar put his hands on Anichent’s upper arms, looking at his handsome features. “What are you doing here?” he wanted to know. Anichent said nothing, instead shifting his gaze past Shar.

That was when Shar sensed the other presence behind him. As he had just done, he spun around, knowing the identity of the person even before he saw her. Dizhei—shorter, a bit stout, but in a pleasing way—stood in the other corner at the front of the room.

And suddenly, Shar understood. As Dizhei moved toward him, he stepped back and turned again, this time toward Zhavey.The many thoughts intertwining in his mind drained away, leaving behind a dangerous emptiness. His muscles tensed, rage coursing through his body as though his blood were afire. The padd he still held shattered as his hands clenched into fists. He dropped the pieces where he stood, and before he could stop himself, he charged across the room. A sofa sat between the front of the room and Zhavey,and Shar took it in an easy bound. As he landed, his knees bent and his elbows pulled back, his body ready to leap and strike at—

Zhavey.

In the last moment before his family would have been torn irrevocably apart, Shar regained enough control to stop. He pushed the anger back down, unfulfilled. He stood up fully from his crouch, trying to marry his body to his mind once more. He looked at Zhaveyand saw an expression on her face, not of fear or resentment, but of sadness. Even with Charivretha in front of him, and two of his bondmates behind him, he felt utterly alone.

“What are you going to do, my young chei?”she asked quietly, and he knew that the question encompassed more than whatever actions he would take in the next few minutes. But Shar realized that he could not even have told her what those next few minutes would bring from him, let alone the coming days and months and years.

“How could you do this?” he hissed at her. The quality of his voice scared him, directed as it was at his zhavey,and when he spoke again, he did his best to moderate his tone. “Whywould you do this? Do you think—”

Thriss walked through the doorway from the bedroom and stopped next to Zhavey.“We all did this, Shar,” Thriss said gently. “We miss you.”

“Thriss,” he said, her name barely audible as it passed his lips. He loved all of his bondmates, but Thriss…

He raced to her and swept her up in his arms, spinning her around. He squeezed her tightly, thinking nothing but her name, feeling nothing but her warm body clutched against his. “Thriss,” he said. “Thriss.”

“We love you,” Dizhei said behind him.

With difficulty, Shar released Thriss. Keeping a hand on her shoulder, he looked over at Dizhei and Anichent, who had both walked across the room to them. “I know,” he said. He gazed again at Thriss and said, “I love you,” and then looked at his other two bondmates, including them in his declaration.

“Then come back with us,” Anichent said. “Come home.”

Shar sighed and looked away, dropping his hand from Thriss’s shoulder, his energy sapped. “We’ve talked about this,” he said.

“No,” Thriss implored him, “wehaven’t; youhave. You’ve made the decision for all of us.”

“I’m not responsible for your lives,” he snapped, and he saw tears forming in Thriss’s eyes. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked her, and then he walked through the little group, looking at each of them, asking the question of them all, even Zhavey.“Am I supposed to let you—or let our biology or our culture—decide for me what my life will be?” He walked past the window, away from all of them.

An uncomfortable silence filled the room. He heard somebody sniffle, and he knew that Thriss was crying. He fought the urge to go to her, knowing such an action would only aggravate the problem. He tried to think what he could say to them that he had not said before, tried to think how he could make them see why he had to continue on the course that he had chosen, and why that course mattered not just for him, but for them as well, and maybe for all of Andor.

“Nobody wishes to decide your life for you, Thirishar,” Zhaveysaid into the silence. He could tell by the way she delivered her words that she had measured them carefully before speaking. He turned to her. “Your life is your own,” she continued. “Once you have completed the shelthreth,you may return to Starfleet, or do anything else you wish. You would never have to set foot on Andor again.” Thriss sobbed, and Dizhei went to her, putting her arm around her shoulder and gently wiping away her tears.

“I—” he started, and he wanted to say will,and he wanted to say can’t,and he did not know what to say. “Maybe,” he said at last, and somebody gasped, though he could not tell which of his bondmates it had been. “After I return from the mission—”

“No,” Zhaveystopped him. “What would happen if you did not return?”

“I have a commitment,” he said, knowing the moment that the words had left his mouth that they had been the wrong ones to say.

“Commitment,” echoed Zhavey,and he could see that anger had also risen in her, anger that seemed barely contained. “And what of your commitment to your bondmates? That has existed longer than your Starfleet career. And it is a personalcommitment. More, it is an obligation to your kind.”

“I did not make that commitment,” Shar said, regretting the difficult truth, but having no choice but to counter Zhavey’s argument. “It was made forme.” He and his bondmates had been pledged to each other as children, the result of circumstance and DNA matching. Still, he had not left Andor prior to their shelthrethbecause he did not love them; he had grown to love each of them, and he had no desire to see them hurt. But he also could not– would not—take part in the self-destructive patterns that Andorian culture imposed on its members in the name of saving the whole. As much as Zhaveyand his bondmates—and almost all other Andorians—considered their social practices the salvation of their species, Shar viewed those same practices as their demise. And he had committed himself to finding a different solution to their biological dilemma.

Zhaveywalked across the back of the room to him, until they stood face-to-face. “You have an obligation to your family, to these people—” She pointed behind her toward the others. “—and to your society.” She paused, and when she spoke again, she softened her tone. “You have romanticresponsibilities,” she said. “Go look into Thriss’s eyes and see if you can still tell her that you won’t come home.”

Shar saw the beseeching expression on Zhavey’s face, and he would have done almost anything to prevent her from continuing to feel the way she must be feeling. He searched for the words to say, and more than that, he searched for some measure of coherence in all of the emotions churning within him. I love my bondmates,he thought. I love myzhavey and I love my people. And I hate what they’re all doing to themselves.

Before he could find what to say next, Zhaveyspoke. “You willdo this,” she said. It was enough to get him moving.

“I can’t,” he said, and he strode quickly across the room. He had to stop to wait for the door to the corridor to open fully, and in that second he heard Thriss call his name: “Thirishar.”

He left without looking back.

15

Not only had Kira never seen Commander Vaughn this way, she could never even have imaginedhim this way. As they ran down a list of station matters they had decided to review prior to Defiant’s departure this morning, the normally reserved Vaughn moved haphazardly about, like an escape pod being tossed about in the Badlands.

“Commander,” she said, looking up from the computer interface on her desk, “do you intend to walkto the Gamma Quadrant?”

“Excuse me?” Vaughn said. He paced from one side of her office to the other, crossing in front of her desk. When she did not respond to him, he stopped and peered over at her. “I’m sorry. What did you say, Colonel?”

“I just wanted to know if you were going to need the Defianton your mission,” she told him, straight-faced. “Because if not, then you can leave the ship here.” He stared blankly at her, apparently oblivious of either her humor or the reason for it. What she had taken for mere distraction now began to concern her. “Commander, are you all right?”

“Oh,” he said, almost as though coming out of a trance. He looked down at himself and seemed to realize the cause for her question. “Forgive me, Colonel,” he said, and he walked over to her desk and sat in one of the chairs in front of it. “I’m a little…anxious.”

“So I noticed,” she said. “It’s all right. It’s just that I’ve never seen you like this.”

“To tell you the truth,” Vaughn said, “I don’t know if I’ve ever beenlike this.” He smiled, a slight, nervous expression that lent a youthful quality to his features.

“Like what?” she asked him. “Have you got reservations about taking the Defiantinto the Gamma Quadrant? Because Odo promised that the Dominion wouldn’t interfere with peaceful exploration.”

“No, no, I’ve got no reservations,” Vaughn told her. “And I’m not concerned about the Dominion.” He paused and looked off to the side, absently brushing his hand over his beard. He appeared pensive, as though making a decision about something. The expression on his face looked familiar to Kira, and she realized that she had seen it once before: in the Bajoran temple on the Promenade, just before he had revealed the reasons he wanted to take the position as her first officer—reasons that had included his Orb experience. She said nothing now while he remained silent, and then finally he turned back to her. “I’ve wanted to do this for a very long time,” he said. “Since I was a boy.”

“A boy?” Kira asked, surprised at the revelation. In the time Vaughn had served on Deep Space 9, she had come to think of him as a man who could get things done, and who could do anything he chose to do. But she inferred from his words now that he had essentially had a yearning to explore all his life, a yearning that had gone unfulfilled, and that registered to her as uncharacteristic of him.

“Yes,” Vaughn said, leaning his forearms on the front of her desk. “When I was very young, my mother used to take me out into the wilderness occasionally. She’d make a fire and we’d sit around and talk and keep warm.”

Images came to Kira’s mind as Vaughn spoke: sitting with her two brothers and her father around a fire, either at the Singha refugee camp, or out in the rough country, on the run from the Cardassians. Despite the horrors they had all suffered during the Occupation, she recalled those times with her family fondly.

“And I remember,” Vaughn continued, “that when the fire would start to sputter, I’d crawl into my sleeping bag. As the fire continued to diminish, and my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I would be able to see more and more stars.” Although Vaughn still faced her across her desk, Kira had the impression that his eyes did not see her, but gazed back into the past. “And I remember thinking that if the universe was truly infinite, then that must mean that everything you could possibly conceive of must be out there somewhere.”

“I remember thinking that same thing when I was a girl,” Kira said, although she did not add that what she had most wished for back then had been a Bajor where her mother had not been killed, and where her brothers and her father were not always hungry…and where there were no Cardassians.

Vaughn smiled at her, his eyes twinkling, obviously unaware of the cloud that had passed through her heart. As he went on, Kira let go the dark aspect of her recollection, focusing instead on the marvels of an infinite universe. As though putting voice to her thoughts, Vaughn said, “I also thought that there must be wondrous things out there of which I couldn’t possibly conceive. Anyway, that mystery, that promise of not only the unexpected, but the unimagined…that was what filled my childhood with the desire to explore.”

“What happened?” Kira asked.

Vaughn did not answer right away, and Kira could not tell whether he was trying to pinpoint in his mind just what had happened to take him away from those dreams, or whether he was deciding if he could talk about it. “A lot of things happened, Colonel,” he finally said. “As I’m sure you know, a lot of things happen to all of us.” She could only nod her head slowly in agreement.

They sat quietly for a moment, and then Kira glanced down at the time on her desktop display. “Well, Commander,” she said, “you’ve only got ninety more minutes before you officially become an explorer.”

Vaughn lifted his arms from her desk and sat back in his chair. “If we can get through this list,” he said, pointing at the display. “Sorry for the digression. What was the next issue?”

Kira reached forward and operated the console, paging to the next item. “Personnel rotation while the Defiantis away,” she said. She scanned the duty and shift changes Vaughn had proposed and that she had approved, and she made a decision. “You know what, Commander?” She swiveled the display around so that Vaughn could see it. Then she worked the controls again and the screen went dark. “We’ve already been over these issues; there’s really no need to go over them again.”

“Are you sure, Colonel?” he asked. “I’m happy to review the list with you.”

“I trust your work on all of this,” she said. “And even if there’s a problem,” she added with a smile, “I think we can handle it.”

Vaughn smiled back. “I think so too.”

“So,” she said, rising from her chair, “why don’t you go explore the universe?” When Vaughn stood, she extended her hand to him across the desk. He took it with a strong, solid grip. “Walk with the Prophets, Elias,” she said.

He bowed his head to her. “Thank you, Colonel.”

As she released Vaughn’s hand, the door chime sounded. Vaughn turned toward the door, and Kira peered around him to see who it was: Admiral Akaar. It had surprised Kira somewhat when the admiral had returned to DS9 a few days ago. It remained unclear to her how long he would be on the station or what his exact purpose here was—he had been vague when she had contacted him in his quarters aboard Gryphonand asked him about it—though his presence here, and that of Councillor zh’Thane, supported her belief that the Federation might soon take action regarding Bajor’s admittance. “Come in,” she said, and the doors parted and slid open. The admiral entered, and Kira could not help but make note once more of his enormous size.

“Colonel,” he said.

“Admiral,” she acknowledged him.

“I wanted a moment with Commander Vaughn before he left,” Akaar said. Kira motioned toward Vaughn, an invitation to the admiral to proceed. “I wish to bid you a safe and prosperous journey, Commander,” he said.

“Thank you, Admiral,” Vaughn said, and he raised his right fist to the left side of his chest, making the same gesture to Akaar that the admiral had made to Kira when she had first met him. Akaar returned the gesture. “I was just on my way to Defiantright now.” Vaughn looked to Kira. “Permission to disembark, Colonel,” he said in a rather official manner, but Kira thought she saw a gleam in his eyes.

“Permission granted,” she said.

“Colonel,” the admiral said simply.

“Admiral.”

The two men turned and left her office. When the doors had closed, she walked out from behind her desk and over to the right, where she peered through a window into ops. She watched Vaughn and Akaar enter the turbolift and then descend out of sight. She continued to stand there for a moment, hoping that Vaughn would find the substance of his boyhood dreams where he was going. She also thought that he would be missed on the station while Defiantwas away. And more than that, she realized that she considered him a friend, and that she would miss him too.