Chapter 8

“WHAT?”

Tom Paris seldom bellowed. He hadn’t liked it when his dad had bellowed when he was younger and disliked the sound of it even more coming through his own throat. But he was bellowing now, and he knew it, and frankly he didn’t give a damn.

“I know how you must feel,” said B’Elanna as they stood together in their quarters on the Klingon ship. “But—”

“No,” bellowed Tom, “no, you don’t know how I feel. Damn it, B’Elanna, we’ve only just gotten back! Our baby is exactly two weeks old today, and you want to go on some vision quest that claims the life of one out of every three pure-blooded Klingons who attempt it?”

[100] She bristled. “Are you saying because I’m only half-Klingon that I won’t be able to make it?”

Tom sighed, his anger ebbing. Fear and frustration rushed instead to fill the void. “That’s not the point and you know it.”

B’Elanna made an annoyed sound and fished around in the collar of her uniform. Removing a crumpled piece of parchment, she shoved it at him.

“Read this,” she snapped. Curious, he read with dawning comprehension, and nodded when he had finished. He sighed and rubbed his eyes.

“I wish you’d said this at the beginning,” he said, handing the note back to her. “I hate it when we argue.”

“So you understand.” She was visibly relieved.

“Of course I do. It’ll also help me explain to Mom and Dad—”

“No. I didn’t even want to tell you. You can’t tell anyone about the note.”

Tom stared. “Why do we have to keep this secret?”

She sighed. “You’re not supposed to have any but the purest motives when you accept the Challenge of Spirit.”

“I’d say your goal is pretty pure.”

“So would I, but I don’t think the priests would see it that way, and I don’t want to risk not getting permission to go.”

“Hell, sweetheart, you’d go anyway.”

She smiled, and her eyes sparkled. “Yeah, but it’d be a lot harder, and it’d cause a diplomatic incident.”

“I’ll try to think of something to tell the folks. Maybe it’s some kind of rite of passage to honor your mother’s death or something.”

[101] “That sounds believable,” said Torres.

“Please, please take care of yourself,” Tom said, his voice dropping to a whisper as he reached out and wrapped his arms around her. “I don’t know what Miral and I would do if anything happened to you.”

He thought he saw tears sparkling in her eyes. “I will. I want to do this and come home and be a family. God, I’m going to miss you both so much.”

Tom felt his throat getting tight. He swallowed past the lump. “I’m sure if you encounter any targs, they’ll think they’ve gotten the worst end of the bargain.”

He bent and kissed her, tenderly but passionately. She was the one to break the kiss, stepping back and putting her hand on his chest.

“I have to get back. Please take care of yourselves.”

“Come home to us,” he whispered.

“I will. I swear I will.”

“I simply cannot believe,” the Doctor said, for the umpteenth time, “that there are no crowds. Not even a groupie or two. No one from the press at all. I had my speeches all prepared, and—”

“And even a list of sample questions for your interviews, I know,” said Barclay, a touch snappishly. “Doctor, as I’ve told you, I find it difficult to believe myself. But there it is. Now will you please let me return to my work!”

When the Doctor had first hinted that, now that Voyager was in dry dock, he no longer had a proper home, Reginald Barclay had leaped at the chance to host the Doctor. Of course, he still had his holographic emitter, [102] and it was a matter of a few hours for Barclay to rig up a few emitters in his home. With his deep fascination with all things holographic, Barclay had thought himself the luckiest person alive when the Doctor had agreed to come live with him nearly a month ago. He didn’t understand the meaning of the glances that had been exchanged between various crew members when the Doctor had made the announcement, but now he did.

He was a great man—well, he wasn’t exactly a man, of course, but he was great, nonetheless—and a towering intellect. Barclay had loved every minute of Photons Be Free and had run the simulation at least half a dozen times! But the Doctor was, well, on twenty-four hours a day. He didn’t sleep, and with no sickbay, he had nothing to occupy himself with. He was bored and a bit hurt by the perplexing lack of adulation he had been greeted with upon his return. Barclay had suffered agonies on the Doctor’s behalf, feeling his pain and frustration, but all his assurances that no one aboard Voyager was receiving the accolades they deserved fell on deaf ears. The Doctor felt slighted, and everyone was going to hear about it.

“The only one who’s received any attention at all is Seven of Nine,” the Doctor went on, “and ironically, she despises it.” He sighed heavily. “Genius is never appreciated in its own time. Fortunately, I am eternal. I can afford to wait for the universe to recognize me.”

“Hey, I’ve got a great idea,” said Barclay, turning around in his seat. “Why don’t you start another holonovel?”

To his relief, the Doctor brightened visibly. “A [103] sequel to Photons Be Free? Hmm ... intriguing. But I think perhaps a sequel would weaken the impact.”

Nearly panicked, Barclay said, “N-Not at all! Surely you haven’t said all there is to s-say about the plight of the hologram.”

“Well,” said the Doctor thoughtfully, “I could shift the focus from the Emergency Medical Hologram’s thankless life aboard a starship to the appalling lack of appreciation he receives on Earth.”

“Exactly,” said Barclay, and when the Doctor steepled his fingers and leaned back to think, he breathed a sigh of relief.

It went worse than Tom had feared.

His mother cried. Miral wailed. And instead of bellowing, Admiral Paris looked at his son with a mixture of contempt and compassion. Tom realized that his father actually felt sorry for him, sorry that Tom had messed up again, had married a wild Klingon Maquis woman who evidently thought so little of her husband and newborn daughter that she was traipsing off to perform some ancient rite that honored the dead more than the living.

What really pissed him off was that he had thought so too, until B’Elanna had shared her secret with him. The secret he was not permitted to share in turn.

So he got defensive. He said that he didn’t blame B’Elanna for wanting to leave, to look for a little space, hell, if he could he’d leave and have a little space, and his mother said, “I told you, Owen, seven years wouldn’t change anything,” and Miral started to cry, and Owen Paris just looked stern and sad at the same [104] time, which when Tom thought about it was really quite a feat.

So now he was standing outside, cradling a Miral who had finally decided to quiet down after two full hours of screaming until Tom felt certain her little lungs would pop right out of her throat. Now she snuggled against him and cooed softly. He felt her weight in his arms, a slight heaviness that felt good and pure and clean and simple as the stars twinkling above. He took a deep breath of the cool night air.

Behind him, he heard the door close, and then open. He didn’t turn around. Heavy steps crossed the back deck.

“Do you remember when you were six years old,” Owen Paris said, not looking at his son, “and we lay on the grass together and I pointed out the constellations to you?”

Tom smiled faintly in the darkness. “Yeah,” he said. It was the closest he and his father had ever gotten. In later years, he would look back on those summer nights and marvel at the thought of Admiral Paris lying on the lawn, looking at stars.

“Come on,” said Owen Paris, descending the stairs from the deck. He moved more slowly than he had when Tom was six; his tread was heavier, his body bulkier. Tom stared, thinking it was a bluff, until Owen actually sat down on the grass. Even then, he didn’t move until the elder Paris repeated, “Come on.”

Wondering what this was all about, Tom did so. He sat beside his father, and then when Owen stretched out on the rich green lawn, he followed suit. Miral coughed [105] softly, then adjusted her small warm body to lie comfortably on her father’s chest. Heart to heart they lay, father and daughter.

“The stars never change,” said Owen Paris. “Although we do. What’s really going on with you, Tom?”

“What do you mean?” Tom of course knew exactly what his father meant and was glad of the soft darkness so that Owen couldn’t see his face.

“B’Elanna’s doing something other than just taking a little time for herself, isn’t she?”

“Dad, I—”

“I’m a good judge of people, son, though you may find that hard to believe. She’s not the sort who would run off and leave her husband and daughter without a damn good reason.”

Tentatively, Tom said, “Would it make any difference if I said she did have a damn good reason? A reason I can’t tell you?”

“It would.”

“She does.”

“Thought so.”

They lapsed into silence, but for the first time in years, it was a comfortable one between father and son. Finally, Owen Paris said, “We’d love to have you stay, son. I’m tickled to death about that granddaughter of mine. But I don’t think you can.”

“No, Dad. I think you’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’re a grown man, with a family. You’ve just come off of a remarkable journey. You’re not a child and you shouldn’t be treated like one.”

[106] Tom was surprised at his father’s frank talk. He couldn’t reply at once, so stayed silent.

“Where will you go?”

“All officers were offered an apartment in San Francisco. Think I’ll take Starfleet up on it. After seven years on Voyager I’m used to living in a small space.”

Owen chuckled. “You’ll miss our offer to get up and change Miral every few hours.”

“I’m sure I will. But you can always visit.”

“We will, son. We will.”

Again they were silent, and stayed on the grass looking at the twinkling points of light.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard moaned in his sleep.

They kept coming, mindless drones with red lasers for eyes and spikes and claws and pincers for hands. Their faces were gray with throbbing black veins snaking across them, and their bodies were encased in black armor. They had once been people, but now were nothing, all their humanity, their passion and fear and joy and love, as mercilessly severed as their various limbs had been.

He kept firing his phaser rifle, but they had adapted and the blast streamed across them like so much water. Despite his attack, they continued to bypass him, obviously not deeming him a threat. His ears strained for the voice of the queen, so that he could track her down and kill her, again. But she was not to be found.

The mammoth tide of Borg suddenly parted and Pi-card found himself staring at a cluster of people huddled on the metallic flooring of the cube. They were [107] Borg, but what a curious collection. Most were children. Many were elderly. A few of them were clearly ill, emaciated from the ravages of disease. They were alive, were awake, but lay at odd angles like discarded toys.

Picard was confused. Children and the elderly and unwell? Why would the Borg want them? The Borg were eternally in search of perfection. It was almost always the finest specimens from each culture they selected for assimilation. The idea was to enhance the collective, not detract from it. Children were indeed taken by the Borg, but they were set aside in hideous maturation chambers, their growth forced and monitored. And the old and ill were useless as drones. This made no sense.

Then again, he knew it was a dream, and dreams often did not make sense.

He awoke with a start, breathing heavily. Reaching for a glass of water beside his bed, he gulped, realizing his mouth was parched. He wondered if he had cried out.

He rose and washed his face, taking a moment to look at himself in the mirror, half expecting to see an implant erupt on his cheek. It remained whole. He returned to bed, wondering why he was dreaming of the Borg. He didn’t usually have such nightmares.

No doubt it was the return of Voyager. It sported Borg technology and two individuals whose presence on Earth could indeed make Picard dream of the creatures. He had not yet gotten to meet the remarkable young woman and youth who had been liberated from the collective, but was anxious to do so once his duty schedule permitted. They, unlike anyone else, would be [108] able to understand the hell he had undergone while he was Locutus. No doubt, they would appreciate connecting with him as well.

Yes, that was it. Seven of Nine and Icheb had been in the back of his mind for several weeks now, and his subconscious had merely brought the Borg to the forefront. He drifted back to sleep and had no more dreams.