Текст книги "Twilight "

Автор книги: David George

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Текущая страница: 39 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

66

Vaughn was drowning.

He had struck the surface of the vortex and felt an immediate series of sensations. His body seemed buoyant within the gray eddies, as though floating in muddy light. Electrical currents streamed across his flesh, and blue jags of radiance filled the null vision of his closed eyes. Unexpected warmth surrounded him, and acceleration gathered him in its grip. The force, smooth and circular, carried him down and around—somehowpushed him down—until, at last, he fell from the universe.

And had continued falling. The warmth vanished, leaving him not cold, but empty. Gravity, too, disappeared, and still he fell. His lungs hungered for air, but feeling the void about him, he resisted the impossible attempt to breathe.

Vaughn had forced open his eyes. In the dusky absence of reality, he saw himself plunging down. The other-Vaughn tumbled away, unseeing, and thenhis eyes opened.

Does he see me? Vaughn had thought, and knew that the other-Vaughn could not. The other-Vaughn was from the past, from moments ago, had only just now opened his eyes.But what does he see? Vaughn asked.Another-Vaughn, from farther back in the past? Vaughn did not know, but he saw fear in the other-Vaughn’s eyes, and knew that it must also surely be in his own. He closed his eyes, unwilling to see.

Vaughn’s lungs had formed their own version of the void by then, and he exhaled in an explosive burst. His body went through the motions of breathing in, but there was no air here. His muscles moved anyway, trying to inhale, trying to help sustain him.

The gray existence had surged into Vaughn, through his mouth and throat, down into his lungs. Filling his lungs with the pseudomatter of the thoughtscape. A spasm closed his larynx.

Vaughn was drowning.

Vaughn was dying, but he did not wait to die. For almost as long as he could remember, he had gazed up at the stars and yearned to explore. And for nearly as long, he had been forced, had been requested, had been constrained, to fight. He could not say that the fighting had come to nothing, because it had not; it had been necessary, always necessary, sometimes for the greater good, sometimes for the smaller, and still other times, merely for survival. But now, in the end, he chose not to battle, for he saw no enemy. Instead, he would do what he had always wanted to do; he would explore.

Vaughn opened his mind. He threw off the walls, he threw off the secrecy, the denials and rationalizations. As his long day waned, he searched for the truth, for the essence of himself.

He opened his eyes again, and saw himself…

…setting the interdimensional devices around the vortex, ready to die alone, unable to have made peace—to have made a bond—with his daughter…

…on a battered starship, engaged with a mystical object that showed him how much death he had been privy to, and that death had been no companion to him…

…standing in a transporter room and watching the love of his life leave, pretending that she would return, knowing that she would not…

…leaning over the corpse of a person he had killed, in the name of saving others, and realizing in that moment that he had sealed himself off from the rest of humanity…

…listening to the words of the officer who had set him on his path, allowing himself to be extracted from the fellowship of the innocent…

…sitting in a sickroom, holding on to the hand of his mother, who had filled his world and left him too soon…

…being born into an existence that promised true connection—of the mind, of the body, of the heart—but in the best of circumstances, delivered isolation in almost every instant…

…and from all those moments, all those Vaughns peered back—peeredforward– at him right now, as he fell within the thoughtscape, gone from one universe and into another, alone as always, and yet alone as never before. Vaughn’s consciousness stretched across all those moments, existed at the same time in all those moments, and in all those in between. And he witnessed all at once, as he thought no one should, the extent to which he had existed, did exist, and would always exist, separated from every other being in the universe.

The loneliness extended from the instant of his birth, across uncounted—billions, trillions—of instants, to now. Not every instant, but almost all of them. The understanding crippled him.

Vaughn was dying, and now he would wait to die.

Waiting, Vaughn understood that the loneliness was a lesson, and he learned from it. He could not have done otherwise, not as he searched for the truth of a life that stretched away behind him. And not as the life that surrounded him, and occupied him, cried out in the pain of an isolation it had never known until inadvertent invaders had brought it the unintended gift of companionship—and then taken it away. The thoughtscape had considered the Prentara both invaders and saviors, Dax had said, and Vaughn now grasped precisely why. Even a tormentor could provide company.

Waiting, Vaughn considered the prison that the home of the Inamuri had become. Still existing in every moment of his life, he closed his eyes on the thoughtscape, and opened them on the morning he left home—after his mother had already gone, and really, had she not taken home with her when she had? Vaughn had always wanted to explore, and now he saw that he had left home a long time ago, and that he had been looking for it ever since.

Waiting, Vaughn realized that these lessons and the learning were connections. The teacher and the student. The thoughtscape had tied itself to him.

Hear me, Vaughn screamed without words.I am here.

Vaughn searched for the right moments of his life. He peered across the thoughtscape and saw everything he had ever been, everything he had ever done, all laid out before him, each instant distinct from the next. He closed his eyes, and opened them on the bridge ofDefiant, returning again to the moment when he knew Prynn had gone.

Not this, he said as his heart ached.Not this.

He closed his eyes, and opened them on the distressed figure of Ensign ch’Thane, thrown onto the desolate plain of a dead planet.

Not this, he repeated.

Vaughn stopped waiting to die, accepting that he had decided to fight again, to struggle for even the smallest connection, for as many moments out of a lifetime that he could. No longer waiting to die, he saw that those moments, no matter how few, no matter how fleeting, were all worth fighting for. They were worth dying for.

His last conscious thought was of his daughter.

67

Kira strode purposefully down the corridor, the bright illumination and openness aboard Gryphona noticeable contrast to the dark, cramped corridors in Deep Space 9’s habitat ring. She read the room-identification plaques as she passed sets of doors, until at last she found the one Commander Montenegro had provided her. She reached up and touched the door chime set into the bulkhead there, and a moment later the doors parted and slid open.

Kira stepped inside, and although she saw Akaar immediately—across the room, seated in a chair—she could not resist looking around. The cabin was spacious, easily twice the size of most of the crew accommodations aboard the ship, she was sure. Unlike standard guest quarters, it had been decorated with more than a few adornments, and not just in a generic manner. Why wouldn’t he make these quarters his own?Kira thought. Akaar had been living here for several weeks now, and who knew how long would be here after today?

Some of the items she saw—including what appeared to be primitive ceremonial masks and totems—reminded her of similar items that Captain Sisko had kept in his quarters. In addition, though, numerous textiles hung on the walls: sashes, headdresses, capes, many of them in brocaded fabric, and in a mixture of both muted and vibrant colors. She also saw an object that appeared to be a weapon: three curved blades arranged in an essentially triangular shape, with a circular hole in the middle that she guessed functioned as a grip.

“Colonel,” the admiral said. “This is unexpected.” He did not stand.

Kira stepped farther into the room. She had come here after the summit had finally adjourned for the day. Now, in a moment of spontaneity, she raised her right fist to the left side of her chest, then opened her hand and held it out in front of her. “I come with an open heart and an open hand.”

Akaar’s eyebrows slowly rose. “Indeed,” he said, and now he did stand. “Then I certainly must welcome you with an open heart and hand.” He returned her gesture.

Kira smiled, skeptical. “Admiral,” she started. She brought her hands together in front of her and paced to her left. “I have to tell you,” she said, “I’m not really sure what to make of you.”

Akaar’s shoulders moved slightly, his equivalent, she supposed, of a shrug. “I am a Starfleet admiral,” he said. “I am here simply executing my duties.”

Kira stopped and faced him across the room, folding her arms across her chest. “And your duties included interrogating me?”

“Interrogating you?” Akaar said. “Yes, they did.”

“Why?” Kira demanded, throwing her hands up and out, and then letting them fall to her sides. “To understand Bajor through me? That’s not really fair. I’m not an elected representative. I don’t speak for my people. I can’tspeak for my people.”

Akaar nodded. “Is this the open heart you come with?” he asked her.

“It’s the open hand,” she said.

“I see.” He moved across the room, away from her and over toward a replicator set into the far bulkhead. “May I get you something to drink, Colonel?” he asked. Looking back at her over his shoulder, he added, “To celebrate.”

Kira did not know what to say. She did not particularly want to share a drink with this man, but she also did not wish to give the impression that she was not pleased about Bajor’s acceptance into the Federation. Before she could formulate a response, Akaar spoke again.

“Colonel Kira,” he said, turning to face her directly, “did you think that my questions to you, and your answers, would prevent me from fostering Federation membership for Bajor?”

“‘Fostering’?” Kira echoed. She found the claim that Akaar had been a proponent for Bajor difficult to believe. But then, she had come here looking for answers from the admiral, wanting to identify and understand his motives. She said, “I will toast Bajor joining the Federation.”

Akaar nodded once, then turned toward the replicator. Instead of ordering something there, though, he picked up a short, bulbous bottle from a shelf. Kira watched as he pulled the stopper from the dark green bottle and poured a clear liquid into two glasses. He carried the glasses back across the room and offered her one. “This is grosz,”he told her. “From my native Capella.” Kira accepted the glass. Akaar held his up and said, “To Bajor joining the Federation.”

Kira lifted her glass, and saw that the drink was not perfectly clear, but had a purple tint. “To Bajor joining the Federation,” she echoed. Akaar moved his glass forward, touching it to Kira’s with a soft ring. He drank deeply, and she took a gulp herself. The drink fired her throat as it went down, leaving behind an acerbic taste as the burn faded. She breathed out loudly through her mouth. “That’s a powerful flavor,” she said.

“Perhaps I should have forewarned you,” Akaar said. “I understood that, as a rule, Bajorans liked ‘powerful flavors.’”

“I wasn’t complaining,” Kira said, and to support her declaration, she took another swallow. Again, she exhaled loudly. “Just offering an observation.”

“Observation noted,” Akaar said. Motioning toward the sitting area, he said, “Would you care to sit, Colonel?” Kira walked around a low table and sat on the sofa below the windows. The admiral’s cabin looked out, not on the station, but on open space. Akaar sat back down in the chair he had been in when Kira had arrived. He drank even more of his grosz,and then said, “Am I correct in saying that you believe I have been attempting to judge Bajoran society through you?”

“Haven’t you been?” Kira asked, trying to keep any antagonism out of her tone, if not out of her words.

Akaar reached forward and put his almost empty glass down on the table. “No, Colonel, I have not been,” he said. “What I have been doing is attempting to judge youthrough your feelings about your people and through your relationship with them.”

“You’ve been judging me?”Kira asked, not sure that the revelation actually made her feel any more comfortable with the admiral.

“I believe that how a person sees their society, how they fit in and do not fit in, how they deal with internal strife, can say a great deal about them.” Kira supposed that there must be some truth to that, but—

“The Attainder the Vedek Assembly imposed upon me…” She let her words trail off.

“The Attainder is the result of how some Bajorans view you,” Akaar said. “Or perhaps it is not even that, but a form of political expediency. But with respect to you, Colonel, it is not the Attainder that interests me, but how you have dealt with it. You have carried on, and not just for yourself, but in continued service to your people.” The words surprised Kira, not because they were not true—they were—but because they revealed an opinion she would never have guessed Akaar to possess.

“Perhaps I owe you an apology, then,” she said. But then, recalling that the admiral had certainly not made his stay at Deep Space 9 an easy one for her, she added, “Or perhaps you owe me one.”

“Perhaps neither,” Akaar countered. He reached forward and picked up his glass of grosz,finishing it. “Would you like another?” he asked.

Kira held up her glass and saw that it was still half full. Quickly, she raised the glass to her lips, threw her head back, and downed the rest of her drink. Then she held the glass out to the admiral, and said, “Yes, thank you.”

For the first time that she had seen, Akaar smiled. He took her glass and walked back across the room, returning a moment later with two new drinks. He handed one to Kira across the table, and remained standing. “Colonel, I believe that you and I have similar feelings about our peoples,” he said. He paused, and then added, “Although I may have more frustrations with mine.”

“Oh, I’ve had plenty of frustrations myself,” Kira said. “Back in the days of the provisional government…” She did not need to finish the sentence.

“I understand,” he said. He seemed to consider something very seriously for a moment, and then he said, “On my world, the Ten Tribes have warred sporadically for most of my life.” Kira wondered how long that was, and suddenly had the sense that Akaar was a great deal older than she had assumed from his appearance. “Numerous leaders have stepped forward through the years,” he went on, “and attempted to unify all the people. Some succeeded, but only for short times. Many of Capella’s greatest leaders were deposed, others were…others were killed.” Genuine emotion appeared on Akaar’s features, an expression of terrible sadness, Kira thought. The admiral absently sipped at his drink, and then said, “I was the victim of a coup myself.”

“You?” Kira asked.

He moved back to the chair and sat down. “I was a boy,” he said. “Born into leadership, a teer at birth.” Kira gathered that teerwas the title given to Capellan leaders. “My mother served as my regent, and it was she who took me from our world and got me to safety when our government was overthrown.”

“Have you ever gone back?” Kira asked.

“Many times,” Akaar said. “I have had a long life, and my people are a good, strong people…perhaps too strong in some ways. The unity we need eludes us.”

“I’m sorry,” Kira said. “I think I understand.”

“I believe that you do, Colonel,” Akaar agreed. “For more than a century, the Federation has provided my people with food and medicine…they have dramatically improved the quality of health care. Before my birth, Starfleet officers even saved my mother’s life. For a long time, I have wished for the opportunities for my people that Federation membership would bring.”

“Will it ever happen?” Kira wanted to know.

“I hope so,” Akaar said, melancholy tainting his voice. “But certainly not in my lifetime. I’ve had to admit to myself that we Capellans have not matured enough as a society to become part of a greater community.” It seemed a difficult admission for him. “I’m envious of your people,” he said, holding his glass up again, “Bajor has come far since the Occupation, and you should be proud of that, Colonel.”

“I am proud of that,” Kira said, but she heard a hesitancy in her tone. “I am,” she repeated, stronger.

Akaar must have sensed her momentary uncertainty, because he asked, “Do you have concerns?”

“Yes,” she confessed, “but not exactly about my people. I favor Federation membership, but tonight, after the first minister’s announcement, I found myself worrying about Bajorans being able to retain their identity now.”

“The Federation has chosen to invite and accept Bajor into our community because Bajorans offer their own uniqueness,” Akaar told her. “There will be no need and no desire to change that. This union is not about how Bajor can be made to fit into the Federation, but rather how the Federation can be made into a part of Bajor.”

Kira smiled, those ideas precisely what she had hoped for, and the words precisely what she had needed to hear tonight. “Thank you, Admiral,” she said.

“You should be proud not only of your people,” Akaar said, “but of yourself, and your part in leading them.”

“I feel privileged to serve.”

“And you will continue to do so,” Akaar said. “I am not supposed to tell you this, but when the Bajoran Militia is absorbed into Starfleet, not only will you be offered a captaincy, but you will be asked to remain in command of Deep Space 9.”

Kira smiled again, realizing that she had never really considered the possibility that she could be reassigned elsewhere once Bajor joined the Federation. “Thank you,” she said again.

“It was not completely my decision, Colonel,” Akaar said, “but those were my recommendations.”

Kira regarded the admiral, amazed at how completely she had misread his motives and judgments. At the same time, she remembered how easy he had made it for her to do so. Something else occurred to her, and she immediately asked the question that rose in her mind. “What about Lieutenant Ro?”

In an instant, Akaar’s demeanor changed. His face seemed to harden, his body to tense. “A determination about Lieutenant Ro has not yet been made,” he said.

Kira persisted, convinced, after serving with Ro for months, that the station’s security chief was being unfairly judged. “And what were yourrecommendations about Ro?” she asked.

“They differed considerably from my recommendations about you, Colonel,” Akaar said. “My opinions about Ro Laren have been on record for a long time.”

Kira nodded, understanding, but also realizing that people changed. Captain Sisko had shunned the title and responsibilities of the Emissary at first, and then had come to embrace them. Damar had been an ugly, hateful man, who had come to acknowledge and regret the terrible things he had done, and had become a strong and worthy leader. And even Kira herself…after the Occupation, she had for a long time resisted the prospect of Bajor joining the Federation, but now…

“Opinions about Capellans have existed for a long time too, I imagine,” Kira finally said. “But maybe in the future, how they learn to comport themselves going forward will matter more than how they did in the past.” Her message to the admiral was clear: Ro deserved another chance, or at the very least, another evaluation.

“Maybe,” Akaar said, the analogy obviously not lost on him. But he appeared unconvinced about either Lieutenant Ro or his own people.

Kira held up her glass of groszonce more. “To Capella,” she said.

Akaar did not smile, but he regarded Kira with what seemed to be an expression of appreciation. He lifted his glass. “To Bajor,” he said.

Kira leaned forward in her chair, holding her glass out to the admiral. He leaned forward himself, and touched his glass to hers. “To newer worlds,” she said.