Chapter 15

Janeway sensed the weight of rock above her the instant the transporter beam released them. Not claustrophobia—tight spaces and enclosed rooms were her venue and lifeblood on board starships—but, rather, a maddeningly acute awareness of the meters and tons of living planet that hovered above her like a precariously balanced sword of Damocles.

She’d discovered this sensation the first time she let Mark talk her into an overnight caving expedition. He said it would be fun. While he slept blissfully through a night of whatever underground wonders so entranced him, Janeway lay through that eight-hour stretch of total darkness with the ominous pressure of a ten-meter-thick ceiling only a handspan above her face, keeping her awake and adrenaline-powered until their subterranean guide reinstated the lights and announced it was time to move on. Mark accused her later of being scared of the dark; she hadn’t been able to convince him that it wasn’t the dark that made her uncomfortable, but the huge, capricious geology that held the dark inside. Just because it had chosen to hold its shape for something like three and a half million years seemed little reason to believe it would continue to do so over the next three hours.

They never went caving again.

Now that same feeling came rushing back on her, although nowhere near as strongly as before. Having a ceiling so tall it almost masqueraded for sky helped, as did the gentle, indirect lighting that seemed to cast delicate shadows in all directions. Still, not even the absence of walls in the immediate vicinity or the dramatic view of a distant city against the glowering horizon could completely distract her from the lack of a true sun blazing overhead, or the lank, clammy stillness of the air. A cave, by any other name.

A small group of Ocampa looked up as the transporter’s chime died away, looking interested but hardly terrified at the prospect of strangers appearing out of nowhere into their sheltered world.

Short rows of anemic plants climbed trellises strung between banks of flowstone, while brilliant white lights had been erected every dozen meters or so to substitute for the reality of a native star. Janeway wondered how the people patiently hauling water to each of the tiny rows had managed to hack out of the growing troughs, much less find the dirt to fill them, and wondered, too, if the presence of the green growing things made any real difference to the starkness of their cave-born lives.

“Captain …” Tuvok moved alongside her, his tricorder aimed upward and singing faintly. “The pulses from the Array continue to accelerate. The intervals between them have decreased another point-eight seconds.”

And was that good or bad? Janeway tried to listen for the deep thrum of the energy beam’s arrival through the muffling layers of stone, and wasn’t sure if what she heard was the Array’s pounding or her own heartbeat in her ears.

“Kes!”

One of the farmers recognized the girl still clinging to Neelix’s hand, and suddenly a burble of excitement swept through the other workers at the sound of Kes’s name. They each took a moment to carefully set aside their crocks and tools, then descended on the landing party with cries of delight that sounded like children heading out for recess as much as anything else. They were all young and pleasantly thin, Janeway noticed as they gathered into a babbling knot around Kes to exchange hugs and brotherly kisses.

It was like being surrounded by a crowd of half-finished adolescents who had only just started to be good at mimicking their parents’ adultness.

“Hello, Daggin.” Kes smiled when the man who’d first called out to her swept her up in his arms. Neelix, on the other hand, looked considerably less pleased.

Still grinning, Daggin pushed Kes away from him to hold her at arm’s length, shaking his head as though unable to believe she were real.

“We never thought we’d see you again! How did you get back?”

“These people rescued me from the Kazon,” Kes told him, flashing a shy smile up at Janeway. “I’m trying to help them find two of their crewmen.” She turned in a half-circle to call to the other Ocampa around them, “Does anyone know where the aliens are kept?

The ones the Caretaker sends here?”

Silence smothered the joyfulness of a moment before as swiftly as a hand over a candle flame. Janeway wondered if it was the mention of off-world aliens that made them so cautious, or the mention of their own Caretaker.

“I think they’re at the central clinic,” Daggin said after a moment.

Janeway touched Kes’s shoulder with quiet hope. “Can you take us there?”

(No.) A new, deeper voice that was somehow both spoken and yet not quite heard seemed to come from nowhere. (She cannot.)

Kes had no difficulty turning to find the speaker behind the farmers to her right. Janeway was startled to see two Ocampa males as round and grounded as the others were fairylike and young. The older of the two, his pale, clear eyes squinted in a frown of unhappiness, pushed gently through the crowd to stand just in front of Kes as the girl explained, “They can’t speak telepathically, Toscat. Please talk aloud.”

The concept of Toscat—or anyone—slipping his words so casually inside her mind gave Janeway a chill. At least the Vulcans had the decency to ask permission before opening any sort of contact that might expose whatever random thoughts happened to occur to either party. Living in a race of telepaths must make keeping secrets a serious challenge.

Janeway decided it might be best to keep Tuvok’s inherited abilities to themselves, at least for the time being. No telling when the captain might decide they needed an informational edge, and Tuvok’s willingness to attach himself to an Ocampa’s thoughts would be worthless if the Ocampa already knew to protect themselves from the Federation visitors.

Toscat pursed his lips as though displeased with the idea of words passing through them, then nodded stiffly toward Janeway without actually meeting her eyes. “I didn’t mean to be rude,” he said, his voice too loud, and stilted with non-use. “But you should not be here.”

“We’ll be glad to leave,” Janeway told him, “once we find our crewmen.”

He looked up at her somewhat sharply then, and Janeway met his gaze firmly. He wasn’t the first person who’d tried to interfere with her duty to her crew, but he was hardly the most threatening. She held him pinned with her stare until he glanced aside again, ostensibly gathering Paris and Chakotay into the discussion although Janeway could plainly see the smears of red darkening on his translucent cheeks.

“That won’t be possible,” Toscat said, addressing the landing party as one large whole. “We cannot interfere with the Caretaker’s wishes.”

Chakotay snorted. “Maybe you can’t, but we can.”

The elder Ocampa shook his head. “You don’t understand—” “That’s right.” Kes touched Toscat’s arm and made him look at her again.

“They don’t understand,” she said, softly but with strength. “They have no way of knowing that the Ocampa have been dependent on the Caretaker for so long, we can’t even think for ourselves anymore. They don’t understand we were once a people who had full command of our minds’ abilities—” “The stories of our ancestors’ cognitive abilities are apocryphal.” Toscat aimed the explanation at Janeway, as though it were important that she understand. “At the very least, exaggerated.”

“We lost those abilities,” Kes said over him, more loudly, “because we stopped using them.”

Toscat waved his hands in front of his face as though to banish her words from his sight. “We should not dwell on what’s been lost, but on all that’s been gained.”

“Yes.” Kes’s voice dripped with a frustration that bordered dangerously on disdain. “We’ve gained a talent for dependence.

For simply taking what we’re given.” She shook her head at Toscat, and took up Neelix’s hand again in a gesture of clear defiance. “I’m going to help them whether you like it or not, Toscat. And I think my friends will join me.”

The young farmers all around them murmured agreement, and Toscat flushed again as he shot a scowl into the quiet crowd. “You defied the Caretaker by going to the surface, Kes. Learn from the experience.

Follow the path he has set for us.”

Kes sniffed a little laugh. “I’ve learned very well, Toscat. I saw the sunlight!” Groans that could only have been from painful longing tore from half the assembled Ocampa. Janeway’s heart went out to them, knowing—if only a little—what it must be like to grow up under the brow of the earth without even the touch of the sun. “I can’t believe that our Caretaker would forbid us to open our eyes and see the sky,” Kes went on. She looked proudly up at Janeway, then back at the other Federation men behind her.

“Come on. We’ll find your people.”

She spun with rigid determination, Neelix scurrying along behind her in a daze of wide-eyed admiration. Janeway watched Toscat as the knot of farmers broke apart into a quiet stream to follow Kes down through the gardens, leaving the elder to wring his hands in the front of his robe and shake his head somewhat sadly. A parent, unhappy with the road his children have taken.

Confident that his disapproval might sink into despair but never over into violence, Janeway motioned her people to stay with her, and started after Kes toward the still far-distant city.