Текст книги "Lesser Evil"

Автор книги: Robert Simpson

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

19

Lieutenant Commander Bhatnagar had returned to duty only two hours before. After a good night’s rest following her release from sickbay, she was anxious to figure out the cause of the overloaded EPS conduit. While by definition, starship engine rooms should have been predictable, uneventful places that operated according to the reliable mathematics of warp physics, she’d come to believe that, more often than not, they were in fact the nexi of entropy. Order battled chaos in these places with an almost dependable regularity. And engineers, she secretly suspected, functioned as avatars of both these forces, keeping them carefully balanced so that neither overwhelmed the other. Thus, warp drive worked, but the best engineers could still find a new wrinkle in the laws of physics when circumstances required it.

Bhatnagar stood over the master systems display table in the center of room and knew that something wasn’t right. Nothing in the diagnostics explained the buildup that led to the plasma overload. According to every instrument and situation monitor in engineering, everything had been fine. Yet something had caused the conduit to rupture, and in the absence of any evidence of a malfunction, or defects in the conduit itself, Bhatnagar knew only one other conclusion was reasonable: sabotage. Someone aboard the Gryphonhad caused the explosion deliberately.

She was considering how precisely to tell the captain when a chime from the computer suddenly rang out. “Warning: Antimatter containment failing. Ejection system off-line. Warp core will breach in two minutes.”

What—?

Bhatnagar checked her monitors as all around her techs scrambled to do the same at stations throughout engineering. But nothing was amiss: Forcefields and injection systems in the warp core were at optimum, the core temparature was well inside the safe zone, and there was no indication of any anomalous energy fluctuations. Yet the computer had just announced imminent failure of the antimatter-containment fields.

“Montenegro to crew,”the first officer’s voice said over the comm system. “Report to the escape pods. All hands abandon ship. I repeat, abandon ship.”

Bhatnagar was beginning to believe chaos had finally gotten the upper hand. Nothing was making sense. A breach in progress where all was well, and now an order to evacuate the ship.

“Commander! What the hell are you doing? Let’s go!”

Bhatnagar ignored her assistant, Lieutenant Benitez, as she sought the cause of the computer’s warning.

“Warning. Antimatter containment now at 50 percent and dropping. Warp core breach in sixty seconds.”

“Savitri, we have to get out of here, now!”

“This doesn’t make sense,” Bhatnagar muttered, moving toward the towering column of the warp core itself. It pulsed normally, tranquilly. The ejection system really was off line, but…

Suddenly Benitez’s hand was around her wrist, yanking her away from the core. “Commander, we’ve been given the order to evacuate. We have to go!”

Bhatnagar allowed herself to be pulled away from the core, still unable to believe what was happening as she started to run to the escape pod.

Mello’s thumb tensed above the trigger. Her eyes never leaving Kira’s, she tapped her combadge. “Mello to bridge.” No response. “Bridge, this is the captain. Respond.”

“Captain,” Kira said, “you have to listen to me—”

“Shut up,” Mello said, backing toward her desk. Without changing her aim, she activated the companel. “Mello to bridge.”

“They can’t hear you, Captain,” Kira said. “Montenegro’s put your quarters under security quarantine. That means a forcefield over the door, signal jamming, and, I suspect, neutralized phasers.”

Mello tested her phaser on the door. Nothing happened. “Dammit,” she said, tossing the useless weapon aside. Xiang still lay unconscious on the floor. “All right, Colonel. Start explaining to me what the hell is going on.”

“Admiral Akaar sent me a message,” Kira began, and with exacting detail, proceeded to explain the truth about Shakaar and his assassination. “Montenegro must have anticipated that he was in danger of being exposed, because almost from the moment I came aboard, he tried to convince me that something wasn’t quite right with you.How you’d begun to distance yourself, how your personality had changed—all things that I’d seen in Shakaar the last few months. He even had evidence ready for us to discover that you were the one who’d faked the cloaking-device reading. He set me up, Captain, to get us both out of the way so he could take over the ship and carry out an attack against Trill.”

Mello had begun pacing the room. “I attended a classified Starfleet briefing on this parasitic species just after I was promoted to captain, eleven years ago. There was compelling evidence to suggest they might someday return, but I never imagined—” She stopped, cut off by a Klaxon and the computer’s announcement of a core breach in progress.

Kira tested the doorway. The force field was still there. Mello failed again to contact other parts of the ship. “Quarantine field should have come down automatically once the evacuation order was issued.”

“Maybe it would have,” Kira said, “if this were a real crisis.”

“You think Montenegro engineered this?”

“I’m beginning to,” Kira said. “That unexplained crisis in engineering gave him the perfect opportunity to set something up. Think about it. He can’t just take command of the ship without an explanation the crew will accept. Confining you here, even killing you, doesn’t help him. He needs control. But if he gets rid of the crew—”

“He’s leveling the playing field,” Mello realized.

Kira nodded. “The ship can proceed to Trill on autopilot, then all he needs to do is implement an attack program, or voice-authorize manual firing of the weapons systems. It’s what he convinced us you’d be able to do.”

“Warning,”the computer said. “Antimatter containment now at 13 percent. Warp-core breach in fifteen seconds.”

“If you’re wrong, we’re dead,” Mello said. The decks vibrated beneath them. Outside the windows, escaping pods could be seen fleeing the ship.

Kira said nothing as the final seconds dwindled…and then passed. The Gryphoncontinued toward Trill at Warp 9.5 silent as a tomb.

Xiang awoke and took the news of what had happened better than Kira expected. Maybe it was because now at least there was no question about who the immediate threat was. Mello studied the chip with Akaar’s message and the parasite file, which Xiang still carried, while Kira and the doctor searched for a way to break out of the captain’s quarters.

Less than four hours from Trill, the forcefield in front of the door fritzed out. The women took positions in different parts of the room, ready to hit Montenegro from three directions. But the doors didn’t open at once. The panels barely budged before several sets of fingers forced their way into the crack, pulling the doors apart.

Faces started to appear between the doors. Spillane. Bhatnagar. Croth. A half-dozen other officers and crewman Kira didn’t recognize. “Captain,” Spillane said. “Are you all right?”

“Nothing that kicking my first officer’s ass wouldn’t cure,” Mello said. “Why didn’t you evacuate with the others?”

“Blame Commander Bhatnagar,” one of the engineers said. “She convinced us the ship wasn’t about to blow up—the warp core was at optimum.”

“Spillane and I both had similar suspicions,” Croth said. “We were on the bridge when Montenegro came up unexpectedly, just in time for the computer to announce the alert so he could order the evacuation. We were already inside our pod when we started to question the situation. Thirty seconds to core breach, it occurred to us to ask the computer to locate you, but internal sensors suddenly went off-line. That’s when we were sure that something weird was going on.”

“When the ship didn’t explode,” Spillane continued, “we tried getting back to the bridge, but it was sealed off. We started searching the ship section by section for anyone else left aboard, and that’s when we ran into Bhatnagar and her team. They said their tricorders detected biosigns coming from your quarters.”

“Good work, all of you,” Mello said.

“Sir,” Bhatnagar said. “Why is Commander Montenegro doing this? What is he after?”

“Colonel Kira and Dr. Xiang will explain on the way,” the captain said.

“On the way where?” Spillane asked.

“The armory, then the bridge,” Mello said, stepping out the door. “I’m taking back my ship.”

Turbolifts were off-line. They had to take Jefferies tubes from deck to deck, using wrist lights because illumination abruptly cut out through most of the ship while they were raiding the armory. Using phaser rifles, cutting their way into the bridge once they reached deck one was relatively easy. And to Kira’s surprise, nothing hazardous greeted their arrival. The bridge was dark and empty. Dim emergency lights cast stark shadows across the room, making the lights from the crew stations seem all the more intense.

Spillane went to the operations console and studied the ship’s status. “We’re still on course from Trill,” she reported. “Speed is constant at Warp 9.5, and flight control is locked off.”

“Computer,” Mello said at once. “Take the warp engines off line. Authorization Mello-Pi-Four-Six-Two.”

“Unable to comply. Emergency manual override in effect. Warp-engine control only possible from main engineering.”

“Computer, locate Commander Montenegro.”

“Unable to comply. Internal sensors off-line.”

Mello cursed herself for forgetting. “Can we send out a distress call?” she asked Croth.

The science officer made a guttural noise of frustration. “Communications are off-line or disabled, I can’t tell which.”

Bhatnagar and her engineers quickly ascertained the extent of the damage Montenegro had done. Clearly realizing that he was still facing opposition aboard the ship, the first officer had abandoned the bridge while Mello and her team were preparing their assault. Evidently he hadn’t had enough time to assume complete control of the ship, so he had concentrated instead on locking out tactical, communications, propulsion, and flight control from the bridge, routing them to engineering. He’d also sabotaged the control systems for transporters, turbolifts, and the internal security systems, which meant there would be no easy way of tracking Montenegro’s movements, or using the life support system against him.

“The computer still recognizes my command codes, though,” Mello said.

Spillane nodded. “That’s the irony. He didn’t even bother trying to override your codes. He just manipulated our systems enough to gain manual control of the areas he was interested in and disabled the rest.”

“Like a parasite,” Kira said. “He’s using the ship like a host body, leeching what’s useful to him.”

“We managed to rescind all of Montenegro’s access codes,” Bhatnagar said, “but it may be too late for that to do us any good.”

“What about autodestruct?” Mello asked.

Bhatnagar and Spillane exchanged looks. “You still have it,” the security officer said. “You can activate it unilaterally now. But the time delay is disabled. Once you give the word, there’ll be no going back.”

“We may not have a choice,” Mello said. “So he’s in engineering.”

“That’s our best guess,” Croth said.

“I’m going after him,” Kira said, checking the charge on her rifle.

“Not alone, you’re not,” Mello said, picking up her own weapon.

“Captain, your place is on the bridge,” Kira reminded her.

“Ordinarily, I might agree, Colonel. But until my people can fix the damage the parasite has done, I’m useless up here. One thing I cando is help you track down the creature and stop it. I owe Alex that much.” Placing a backup hand phaser on her hip, Mello took two tricorders from the engineers and handed one to Kira. “With internal sensors off-line, we’ll need to use these to find him. “Lieutenant Spillane.”

“Sir?”

“You have the bridge. The colonel and I are going hunting.”

“Where do you want to begin?” Kira asked.

Standing in the main Jefferies tube junction on the port side of Starship Gryphon,Mello held out her tricorder and slowly panned the room, scanning the six horizontal tubes that surrounded them, as well as the shafts above and below. “I found his combadge signal. It’s coming from starboard and down, close to the navigational deflector.”

“It’s a ruse,” Kira said. “He dumped his combadge there so we’d waste time going after it.”

Mello nodded. “I agree. But I’m not picking up anything else that would suggest where he is.”

“Engineering is the only place that makes sense,” Kira said.

“Maybe,” Mello said.

Kira tested the hatch for the tube that offered the quickest route to engineering. Locked. She searched for an access panel and pried it open. “I think I can override the seal, but it’ll take a minute.”

“Do it,” said Mello.

Kira went to work. A moment into it, she said “Captain, I want to apologize to you for what happened in your quarters.”

“That’s all right, Colonel,” Mello said, then added darkly, “Maybe someday I’ll find some way to surprise you on Deep Space 9.”

“I really made a mess of things. I led a mutiny against you, all because I let Montenegro manipulate me into thinking you were the most likely suspect to be the parasite host.”

“But I wasthe most likely suspect,” Mello pointed out. “Between what happened on Deep Space 9, the message you got from Akaar, and the lies Montenegro had been feeding you, you made the logical choice, and did what you thought was necessary to save lives. I’m not sure I would have acted differently if our positions had been reversed, given the circumstances.”

“I was ready to kill you back there. I almost did.”

“We almost killed each other,” Mello corrected. “But isn’t that the point, Nerys? This thing inside Montenegro tried to pit us against each other, to divide and conquer. It failed then, and it’s going to fail now because were refusing to be divided.” Mello suddenly shook her head and chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“I have a confession to make, Colonel,” Mello said. “When I first found out you were put in charge of Deep Space 9, I had my doubts about you. I didn’t think it was right that a Federation starbase or its Starfleet personnel should be placed under the command of a non-Starfleet officer, allied or not, and I resented you even more when you were put in command of the Europa Nova evacuation. I think I would have felt the same even if I’d already known that your Starfleet commission was still active. Because the bottom line was, you didn’t wear the uniform, and your loyalties were still to Bajor first. You were too provincial for my comfort, despite what your advocates in Command thought about you.

“But then I saw you in action during the Europani evac, and I knew that I was the one who was too provincial. I allowed myself to believe that because you didn’t come up through the Academy, any leadership qualities you possessed, any of the experiences or abilities that brought you to where you are, had to be less than those of a Starfleet captain. I realize now those beliefs were unworthy of you, and unworthy of me.”

Kira shrugged as she continued working on the lock. “Captain, I really don’t understand what the point of all this is.”

Mello grabbed her by the arm, forcing Kira to look at her. “Just this: Starfleet would be damn lucky if you decided to put on its uniform again. But if you don’t, if the worst happens and Bajor and the Federation go their separate ways, then I think the loss to both sides will be incalculable. If I’ve learned nothing else during the last four months, it’s that together we add up to something far greater than we’ll ever be apart.”

Kira made no reply, but she held Mello’s gaze for a moment before returning her attention to the lock. “Think I’ve got it,” she said. “Get ready. On three. One…two…three.” The Jefferies tube portal opened to darkness.

Mello was checking her tricorder.

“Anything?” Kira asked.

“I’m not sure,” Mello said. “I think he may have set up a jamming field.”

“Great,” Kira said. “Let me go first. You can continue scanning as you follow.”

“Colonel—”

“Captain, I know this is your ship, and I know you feel you have a personal stake in taking the lead here, but you have to let me take point now,” Kira insisted. “I’ve spent my entire life fighting in dark tunnels.”

Mello hesitated, but even feeling the way she did at that moment, she had to know Kira was the best choice to go first. “Very well, Colonel. Lead on.”

They began to crawl. Ten minutes into the tube, Mello reported she was picking up a life-sign dead ahead. And something else. An energy signature. “Colonel, get down!”Mello shouted.

Phaser fire lit up the Jefferies tube, narrowly missing Kira. She hit the deck, hoping Mello had done the same. The orange beams continued to flash over her head in the darkness, the sound of the discharges reverberating through the tube like thunder.

Suddenly the phaser fire stopped. Kira heard the distant sound of a hatch unsealing and immediately returned fire, hoping to tag their foe before he escaped. The echo of the hatch slamming shut testified to her failure. “Dammit!”

There was a soft moan behind her and Kira went cold.

Turning her body around, her wristlight found Mello, a blackened hole smoldering in the middle of the captain’s chest. She was still conscious, staring back at Kira blankly, as if surprised.

“Kira to bridge! Captain Mello’s been hit! Beam her directly to the bridge!”

“Transporters are still down!”the reply came.

“Then send down Dr. Xiang,” Kira barked. “We’re in port Jefferies tube 14A. Move it!”

“Belay that, Spillane,” Mello said. Her breath came in short labored gasps. “You’ll only expose Xiang to danger. Besides…even if Mei gets through…I’ll be dead by the time she arrives.”

“You’re not giving up, Captain!” Kira snapped. “Xiang, get down here now!”

“No…” Mello insisted.

“Stop talking,” Kira told her. “Save your strength—”

“Bridge,” Mello pressed on, “I need you to bear witness…to what I’m about to do…. Stand by….”

“We’re standing by, Captain,”Spillane said quietly, as if she knew what was about to follow.

“Computer,” Mello began. “This is Captain Elaine Mello…commanding officer, U.S.S. Gryphon….Transfer all command codes…to Commander Kira Nerys—”

“Captain, no—” Kira protested.

“Authorization…Mello…Beta…Seven-two-line…execute.”

“Transfer executed,”the computer confirmed. “U.S.S. Gryphon now under command of Commander Kira Nerys.”

“Elaine…” Kira whispered.

Mello groped for her Starfleet combadge. She pulled it off her uniform and placed it in Kira’s hand. “Stop him, Nerys,” she said through teeth clenched against the agony in her chest. “And take care of my ship.” Kira’s eyes dropped to Mello’s combadge. The silver arrowhead felt strangely heavy in her hand. She looked up again, but Mello’s eyes were already blank and lifeless.

Kira sat in silence for a moment on the floor of the Jefferies tube. Finally she reached out and closed Mello’s eyelids, slipped the captain’s hand phaser into her boot, then placed the Starfleet combadge over her left breast.

“Kira to bridge.”

“Yes, Col—yes, Commander?”

“Captain Mello is dead. I’m resuming pursuit of Montenegro.” Checking the charge on her phaser rifle, Kira continued down the Jefferies tube.

20

Judith had to hand it to Miles—he’d figured out exactly which buttons to push to draw Dad out of his isolation. She knew he wasn’t past his grief, but to see him in his kitchen again—once more conducting his unique symphony of pots and pans, food and fire—Judith was filled with hope for the first time since Ben had disappeared.

Dad had made jambalaya—a Sisko Family specialty—and from the first forkful, the O’Briens looked as if they’d died and gone to heaven. Of course, Dad always put too much cayenne pepper in his jambalaya, but Judith wasn’t about to start that old debate now. Seated around the table, they talked about life in San Francisco. Keiko was working with a team of botanists at a civilian agricultural lab, where they were innovating new varieties of fast-growing food crops for those planets hit hardest during the war. It was rewarding work, she said, but she missed not being able to see her innovations put into practice.

Miles spoke at length about teaching starship engineering to Academy freshmen, how much more sane it was than spending his days and nights trying to keep Deep Space 9 from coming apart, or trying to stay ahead of battle damage aboard his old ship, the Defiant.Keiko leaned over and told Judith sotto vocethat for all his protests to the contrary, Miles secretly enjoyed the chaos of the old days. Judith laughed, which made Miles wonder self-consciously what the two women were whispering about.

She noted that Dad seemed to take a sadistic joy in teasing poor Chief O’Brien—“You call yourself an engineer? You can barely boil water!”—and Miles played the role of the bumbling, replicator-dependent Starfleet engineer to the tee. He had correctly realized that Dad needed someone to blow off steam at, something he could never do in the same way with Judith or Kasidy, or even his loyal staff. But Miles was another matter. By lumbering his way into Dad’s life, he’d given her father something to get mad about that he could fix.

And then there were the kids, who were having precisely the effect Kasidy had hoped they would. They filled the house with laughter again. And though they must have reminded Dad about the children he’d lost, Kasidy and Judith’s hope had been that they would also make him think hard about the child still to come. Dad entertained them with yet another in a long list of tall—and contradictory—tales about the fake alligator suspended from the restaurant ceiling. The kids just ate it up.

“So what do you do in San Francisco, Molly?” Dad asked. “Lotta playing outdoors with your friends, I’ll bet. Riding your bike down those amazing hills?”

“I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

“Excuse me?” Dad said.

“I don’t know how to ride a bike,” Molly repeated.

Dad looked up at Molly’s parents in complete incomprehension.

Keiko looked embarrassed. “You have to understand, she grew up on a space station….”

Dad rolled his eyes and shook his head, then turned back to Molly. “Well, I have a solution to that. I have an old bicycle in my basement that my son used to ride when he was your age. How would you like to have it?”

Molly’s eyes lit up. She turned to her mother. “Can I, Mommy?”

Keiko grinned. “I don’t see how we can refuse,” she said.

“Yes!”

“That’s just fine,” Dad said, beaming. “You and your parents can try it out in the park, tomorrow. After a good night’s sleep and a good breakfast.”

“Sir, we wouldn’t dream of imposing any more than we already have,” O’Brien protested.

Dad’s smile fell. “So what are you saying, Chief? Are you going to deprive an old man of the company of these children?”

“No, sir. I just meant—”

“Never mind, never mind,” Dad said, brushing off O’Brien’s explanation. “I’m not taking no for an answer. You’ll all stay the night, at least, and we’ll have a fine time. And tomorrow, Molly can try her new bicycle.”

“What do you say, Molly?” Keiko prompted.

“Thank you, Mr. Sisko,” Molly said.

Dad laughed. He laughed!“You’re very welcome, Molly. Of course, you’ll need to take off that pretty necklace first. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to such a lovely thing.”

Molly touched the ornate silver chains around her neck, adorned with pendants of different sizes and shapes. Judith had noticed it when she first laid eyes on the girl. It wasn’t like anything she had ever seen before, and she had to agree, it was lovely.

“May I ask where she got it?” Judith said to Keiko. “It’s very unusual. Is it Vulcan…?”

Keiko looked at O’Brien, who decided to answer the question himself. “Actually, it’s Bajoran,” he said quietly.

Dad’s eyes darkened, but only a little. “Well, on your Molly it’s positively beautiful, Chief,” he said, then looked at him sternly. “She obviously takes after her mother.”

Miles snorted and shook his head, sipping from his beer.

“Dad, enough already,” Judith chastised him.

“Oh, I’m just kidding,” Dad said, and slapped O’Brien on the shoulder, causing Miles to choke on his beer. “Anyone with children like these is welcome in my home any time. As long as he stays out of my kitchen.”

“Noted, sir,” O’Brien gasped, coughing. After a moment he went on, “You know, the necklace was actually a gift from someone. I don’t think about it much anymore, because it happened the first year we were on the station, but it’s actually a bit of a mystery.”

“What do you mean?” Judith asked. “You don’t know who gave it to her?”

“No, I do,” O’Brien said. “It was Kai Opaka. She was the religious leader of Bajor at the time. The thing is, she was lost in the Gamma Quadrant right after that. See, she’d come to the station after spending her entire life planetside, and had asked Captain—I mean, Commander Sisko, to take her through the wormhole. I prepped the ship they took for the journey. Opaka and I passed each other in the airlock, and she was wearing that necklace. Then suddenly she looks at me—and I swear it was like she could see inside me—and she says, ‘You have a daughter, don’t you?’ Now, I want to stress I’d never met this woman before. There was no reason for her to know anything about me, and Molly was only a year old at the time. But when I told her I did have a daughter, she took off the necklace and put it in my hand, asking me to give it to Molly. Then she stepped into the ship like she never expected to come back.”

“So what happened?” Judith asked.

“She died,” Miles confirmed, then added, “sort of. She wound up trapped on the surface of a moon in the Gamma Quadrant. There was nanotechnology—artifical microbes—in the biosphere that resuscitated anyone who died there, and Opaka had been killed when the ship crashed. She came back to life, but she was now dependent on the nanotechnology, which wouldn’t function outside the moon’s biosphere.”

“So she was trapped there?” Judith asked, apalled.

O’Brien nodded. “I’m afraid so. I know Julian—Dr. Bashir, DS9’s chief medical officer—worked for years on a cure, but he never had any success. Then we met the Dominion, and our dealings with the Gamma Quadrant became more complicated.”

“Why would anyone introduce technology like that to an uninhabited moon?” Dad asked.

“Well, it wasn’t entirely uninhabited,” O’Brien said. “It was actually a penal colony for two small warring factions of a Gamma Quadrant species. They had refused to stop fighting, so they were sentenced to fight, and die, and fight again, forever. From what Julian told me, Opaka believed that what happened to her was preordained. She dedicated her life to teaching the factions peace.”

“My God,” Dad muttered, shaking his head.

“She sounds like a remarkable woman,” Judith said.

O’Brien nodded. “I talked to Major Kira about it afterward. Opaka had been a force for peace and unity on Bajor for a long time. Her loss was a blow to everyone. But the thing is, she never doubted for a second that everything that happened to her was happening for a reason. She really believed she was serving a higher purpose, something bigger than herself.”

Judith saw that Dad was listening attentively. The point of O’Brien’s story clearly hadn’t escaped him. “I understand what your trying to say, Chief,” he said, shaking his head, “but my son—”

“Sir, with all due respect,” O’Brien said, “I knew your son as a father, a soldier, a diplomat, a ship wright, an explorer, a religious icon, a baseball fan, not to mention an exceptional cook.” This drew a smile from Dad, and Miles went on, “None of those things were responsible for what happened to him. From what I know, he sacrificed himself for a world he’d come to love more than himself. During his life he was responsible for saving countless lives. You should be proud of him.”

“And my grandson?” Dad asked bitterly. “For what was he sacrificed?”

“Dad,” Judith said. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you need to remember that Jake was a grown man. He was already taking responsibility for his life before the war ended. Wherever he is, whatever happened to him, he chose it.”

“How can I know that, Judith? How can anyone know?”

“I don’t pretend to know anything,” Judith said gently. “None of us do. But are you so determined to assume the worst that you’re afraid to have any hope at all?”

“Judith—”

“And what about Kasidy? While you’re here missing Ben and Jake, she’s missing them on Bajor, about to give birth to your grandchild. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Dad looked at Molly, humming contentedly to herself as she finished the last of her jambalaya. His gaze went to Kirayoshi, who a half-hour ago had demanded to be held and subsequently fell asleep in his mother’s embrace.

With a sudden movement of his arms, Dad pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “I need to get up early. Judith, you’ll see to our guests, won’t you?”

Judith sighed. “Yes, Dad.”

“Then good night,” he said, and headed off to bed.

“That’s it, Molly—keep pedaling!”

Keiko knew there was little chance of Molly falling over, as her father was holding the back of the antique bicycle that she was struggling to learn to ride. She even kidded him that everyone must have ridden bicycles when he was a little boy growing up on Earth, but he assured her that he wasn’t thatold. “I learned a lot younger than you when I was a little boy in Dublin,” he said. “My brothers taught me. There’s no better way to learn balance.” He did admit that he’d skinned his knees more often than he made it from one end of the street to the other without falling off. But there was little risk of that happening to her, as he was holding on tight.

At least, that’s what she believed until she looked over her shoulder and saw that her father was no longer holding on, and was still standing next to her mother at the far end of the block.

“Aaah!” Molly screamed as the front wheel lurched to the left, then right; before she knew what had happened, she saw the wheels of the bicycle swoop over her head and could feel the back of her elbow scraping on the rough concrete.