by Peter David
She stared down at him, watching him as he slept peacefully, his chest rising up and down steadily. She knew that what she had seen in her dream wasn’t going to happen….
Except … it might.
“It will not,” Giniv said confidently.
Selar was pacing the room as Giniv sat there, watching her, looking slightly bleary-eyed. That was understandable, considering that Selar had summoned her there in the middle of the night without any explanation beyond, “I require someone to converse with.”
“I did not say it will,” Selar pointed out formally. “I said it might.”
“Very well, if you feel the need to split hairs …”
“No. Just a need for accuracy.”
Giniv stopped her immediate gut reaction before it got out, and instead said, with customary control, “It might not happen.”
Selar turned to face her. “Ah. So you are saying it might.”
Giniv closed her eyes to block out the annoyance, and in doing so almost drifted back to sleep, so she opened them once more. “Selar … this is a pointless exercise.”
“I am looking for reassurance, Giniv, and so far you are not providing it.”
“I apologize most sincerely, Selar, for not living up to your expectations or requirements. May I go home now?”
As if she had not spoken, Selar continued to pace. She began ticking off comments with her fingers. “Vulcan children are capable of great cruelty. We have seen that. Worse; rather than admitting wrongdoing, they appear determined to defend their bigotry with frightening erudition.”
“They are simply children, Selar. They will learn better as they get older.”
“Will they? Or will they simply grow up into arrogant snobs who are more skilled at concealing or denying their intrinsic arrogance?”
At this, Giniv’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you are saying we are as a race, Selar? Arrogant snobs?”
Selar stopped pacing and covered her face with her hands. “I do not know what I am saying.”
Giniv settled back in the chair. “At last. Something upon which we can concur.”
“What are my choices here, Giniv? Realistically, I mean. Look at the speed with which Xyon is developing. If he maintains this pace, he will be ready for school, for social interaction, at a far earlier age than other Vulcan children are. He may continue to grow and develop at an accelerated rate. This will give children further cause for taunting him. Worse, if he is not capable of handling such treatment with equanimity, the results could be disastrous. He could lash out, hurt someone, even …”
“Kill someone?”
Selar nodded.
Giniv shook her head. “I do not accept that, Selar. It will not happen.”
“How do I know that?”
“Because you will not let it! You will train him. You will teach him. You will impart to him your wisdom, let him know what is right and what is wrong. You will teach him control, as any Vulcan mother does with her child.”
“The parents who taught those children apparently did not do their job sufficiently. I saw no control in that instance. I saw only cruelty. Needless, heartless cruelty.”
“What are you saying here, Selar?” she asked. “What is the point you are trying to make? What alternative are you presenting? Thus far, you have simply tossed out a string of utterances that border on the hopeless. You are underestimating yourself. You are not allowing for the possibility that you will be a superb mother who will be perfectly capable of raising an equally superb child. Battering yourself in this manner is counterproductive.”
“I am simply—”
“Concerned, yes, I know. And because you are concerned, you will behave in an appropriate manner and raise your child accordingly. I would expect nothing less of you.”
Selar ceased her pacing and sat in a chair opposite Giniv. “You are quite certain of that?”
“I am positive. Absolutely positive.”
And in a very quiet voice, Selar said, “And if I am wrong … or if I am unable to do my job sufficiently … and a child’s taunting words die in his throat because my son, in a childish fit of rage, killed him … what will you say to that?”
“I will say,” Giniv told her, “that at the time when the decisions were being made, and the efforts at childrearing were being put forward, you acted in a logical fashion. What could be asked of anyone other than that?”
“What indeed,” mused Selar.
Except that she was coming to her own conclusions on the subject … and they were conclusions that did not appeal to her at all. They were disconcerting. They were bothersome. They were even painful. However … they were also logical. And that was the worst aspect of all.
RAFE
RAFE WAS WALKING PAST the Engineering Room when he noticed, to his surprise, Morgan emerging from it, looking a bit puzzled. He walked toward her briskly, and it was obvious that she was greatly lost in thought because she didn’t hear him until he hailed her by name. “Oh. Rafe, hello,” she said, not with a lack of enthusiasm, but certainly in a distracted manner.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“Well, I …” She looked once more toward the Engineering Room.
“Should I be jealous?” he said teasingly, kissing her on the forehead.
“No, no, not at all, it’s just … well, I wanted to talk to Mr. Scott. I feel as if there are … things that we should be saying to each other, or things that I wanted to say, or …” She shook her head in frustration. “Damn him. I can’t remember the last time a man actually had me confused. I’d forgotten the sensation, and I can’t say I appreciate the reminder.”
“Then why bother yourself over it?” He draped an arm around her. “Come. Why don’t we—”
“It’s not a question of bother, Rafe. It’s that Scotty is really a good man at heart, and I’d like to talk to him about … things. But he’s not there.”
“That shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s not as if he’s under house arrest, unable to wander away from that one place.”
“I know that. But they haven’t seen him around for most of the day now, and frankly, that’s got me a bit alarmed.”
Rafe scratched his chin, giving the matter consideration. “Perhaps you want to talk to that manager fellow. Quincy, I think his name is. He might be of some help.”
“I asked after him, but they haven’t seen him around, either.”
“Well, there you go!”
She looked at him blankly. “There I go where?”
“They’re probably off together somewhere.”
“Why didn’t I think of that? What a lovely couple they make, too,” she said dryly.
“Now, that’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Rafe said in a faintly scolding tone. “There’s probably business that needs to be attended to. Perhaps they’re touring some other facility, or having meetings in other resorts. It could be any one of a dozen things. No need to suspect foul play.”
For a long moment she was silent.
“Is something wrong, Morgan? Did I say something—?”
“I never said I suspected foul play,” Morgan said, her eyes narrowed.
“Well, I … I thought it was implicit in your concerns. You did say you were ‘alarmed.’ What would give you reason for alarm if not a worry that something … unfortunate … had occurred? Foul play, an accident … whatever you’d want to call it. I don’t really want to get tangled in semantics.”
“Neither do I. I’m sorry, Rafe. You’re probably right,” she sighed. “Two problems: I’m a mother, and I’ve been around for … a bit. So I tend to excel in dreaming up worst-case scenarios of all manner. There’s no need to inflict any of them on you, though.”
“Tell you what,” Rafe said, “I have a thought. Let’s have dinner tonight, the four of us, back in Shakespeare’s Tavern. The place where all four of us first met. Do you think Robin will be up for it?”
“Don’t you mean, do I think Robin and Nik will be up for it?”
<
br /> “Yes,” he laughed, “they have become somewhat inseparable, haven’t they?”
“You shouldn’t make fun. I think it’s sweet.”
“I wasn’t making fun, and I think it’s sweet, too.”
They chatted for a bit longer, and then he kissed her gently and they went their separate ways. When he returned to his hotel room, Nik was already there, emerging from the shower with a bathrobe draped around himself. From long practice, Rafe could tell that something was bothering him. “Problem?” Rafe asked.
“You could say that. I had to kill the manager and the engineer. Tossed them down a computer shaft.”
This brought Rafe up short. “Why did you do that?” he asked calmly.
“They had the damned poor luck to show up when I was working at the computer core.” He’d been toweling his hair dry, but now he lowered the towel. “I’d been trying to do what needed to be done at remote consoles, but that annoying Scotsman built in safeguards without realizing what he was guarding against. Damn him, even his safeguards had safeguards. The only way to get things done was at the core itself.”
“Had they seen you?” asked Rafe. He sat in a chair on the far side of the room.
“Oh, please,” said Nik disdainfully.
“If they didn’t see you, then why did you feel the need?”
“Because they might have seen me. And because the Scotsman had caused us some inconvenience, and because the Quincy person was just annoying. Did I need more of a reason than that?”
“No, no. I just wanted to make certain that you had not acted precipitously. So the transfer of funds is in place, then?”
“Processing even as we speak. By tomorrow morning, every credit will be shifted over into your private accounts.”
“Good,” said Rafe, nodding approvingly. “We’ll want to stay to see that nothing goes wrong. But, by tomorrow afternoon, we’ll be long gone.”
“I’ll miss Robin,” Nik said, looking a bit saddened. “She’s … very exciting.”
“The mother is most intriguing, but the daughter is nothing special. When you’ve lived long enough, you’ll understand that. Which reminds me … we’ll have dinner with them tonight. Now,” he raised a cautioning finger, “don’t kill them. That would be most impolite.”
“I’ll try to restrain myself,” said Nik, and went to comb out his hair.
BURGOYNE
LIFE IN NEVADA had been rather quiet for Burgoyne, and s/he had decided that was the way s/he liked it. Perhaps there was something to be said for the Starfleet philosophy of taking time off after the destruction of a vessel. It was a time of thought, of introspection. It was … peaceful. Burgoyne realized that it had been a long time since s/he had truly known peace.
One day was very much like the next for hir, and even that was welcome. After all, working in engineering, every day had presented new challenges, new obstacles, and new crises. S/he had begun to think that s/he required that constant stimulation, as if s/he was incapable of settling into some sort of routine. But s/he was rather pleased to discover that that was apparently not the case, for nothing could have been more uniform—even boring—than the existence that s/he was presently living, and it wasn’t bothering hir one bit.
S/he would get up in the morning … have breakfast … meditate. There was a cool lake not far from the house—one that had not been there as recently as fifty years ago, but thank heavens for land reconstruction. S/he would go down there in midmorning and paddle around. Float there, arms outstretched, the sun beaming down upon hir, and hir thoughts would fly a million miles away to Vulcan, as s/he wondered what Selar and Xyon were up to. S/he discovered that, with the passage of time, the sting lessened just a little bit. Only a little, but at least it gave hir hope for the future.
S/he would spend the balance of the day simply walking around the desert. The thing that was most impressive to hir was that s/he would see new things every day. Hard to believe, since one would think that a desert was unchanging, one day to the next. But s/he would find endless fascination in discovering that, for instance, some new bit of green growth was fighting its way into existence on some rock. S/he would stop by every day to see how it was doing, rooting for it in its struggle to assert its own existence. I am here. See me. I will not be defeated, it seemed to say to hir, and s/he wondered just how much it reflected hir own situation.
And in the evenings …
Well … s/he didn’t like the evenings, actually. They were a difficult time for hir. Not terribly so, not insurmountable in their discomfort. But somehow, when the sun was down and it was just hir and the darkness, that was when the solitude would begin to sting hir a bit. That was when s/he wished s/he had an adult to play with … or a child to dandle on hir knee.
“It’s for the best,” s/he told hirself. In fact, s/he told hirself that several times a day … which was an improvement, considering that s/he used to tell hirself that several times an hour. So it was true, s/he was getting better at handling the hurt.
Why had s/he done it?
S/he didn’t know. S/he had gone over and over everything that had occurred, and still had been unable to make sense of it in hir own mind. S/he supposed, when it came down to it, it had to do with pride. Selar simply seemed to have so much more of it than Burgoyne. Not that Burgoyne thought little of hirself; quite the opposite. But Selar was so intensely prideful that it seemed to be one of the overwhelming aspects of her character. As they had struggled there, under the hot Vulcan sun, two different futures spun out for Burgoyne in hir imagination. One of those futures showed Burgoyne without Selar and hir child. Oddly enough—or perhaps not oddly at all—that future looked very much like the one s/he was living right now. It wasn’t so bad, really. Not really. S/he was surviving just fine, and, indeed, even enjoying the time to hirself. S/he was becoming reacquainted with all that s/he liked about hirself, and that was quite a bit to like.
The other future showed Selar without her child, and more … without her pride. Rightly or wrongly, Burgoyne was certain that Selar would not bounce back quite so quickly from a pride-shattering defeat. She had walked into that place of judgment certain that logic and tradition would carry the day. She had had no warning whatsoever, not the slightest inkling, that tradition was going to work against her. That an ancient rite of battle was going to be thrown in her face, that she was going to have to go toe-to-toe and slug it out for the right to raise her child the way she saw fit. For Burgoyne, Xyon was on the line. For Selar … everything was on the line.
There was never any doubt in Burgoyne’s mind that Selar would give Xyon a good home. It was just that s/he was certain that s/he could give him a better one. But s/he found that s/he did not want to destroy Selar in order to do that.
“Do you still love her?” Slon had asked hir. The truth was, s/he didn’t know anymore. If s/he did—and it was indeed possible that s/he did—it was obviously unrequited. It couldn’t have been more clear to Burgoyne that Selar felt nothing for hir at all. Burgoyne had simply been … a means to an end.
Well … that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Because when they had been together, Burgoyne had felt like it was anything but that. S/he felt that Selar and s/he had connected at a far more basic, spiritual, emotional level, and had always assumed that Selar had not wanted to acknowledge it simply because the concept of emotions was anathema to her. The things that Slon had told hir about Selar went further toward explaining what Selar’s mindset was like. It had helped. It just hadn’t solved it.
There really wasn’t much point to dwelling on it anymore. And yet, Burgoyne couldn’t help but do so, as one tends to pick at a scab. The hurt would fade. The sting would pass. But there was always going to be some part of Burgoyne that found itself wondering … what if?
S/he had stumbled upon a piece of poetry in hir reading that summed it up for hir: “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.”
And then, one day, it all changed.
Burgoyne was walking back from the lake where s/he had been swimming. As always, there was no one around, and so Burgoyne had not bothered with clothing of any kind. S/he was allowing the gentle, warm wind to dry hir for the most part, with a towel slung over one shoulder that s/he had been lying out upon while sunning hirself on a rock near the lake.
As s/he approached hir house, however, scents began to waft down the wind to hir. Hir nostrils flared, and s/he stopped where s/he was, balancing hirself on hir toes without thought, as if poising hirself to make some sort of an attack on whoever was there. All of hir defensive instincts were kicking in.
There were two scents coming to hir from the house. S/he recognized both of them.
S/he gasped, unable to trust hirself that what s/he thought s/he was detecting was genuine. But s/he was so eager to believe it that s/he tossed caution aside entirely. S/he gave no thought to the fact that s/he was nude, or that s/he might be running into some sort of danger. Instead, s/he barreled straight toward the house, moving with absolutely no noise across the desert surface other than the occasional clicking of hir extended claws, which were giving hir traction and additional speed.
S/he burst into the house and stood there, eyes wide.
Slon stood and blinked in very mild surprise. “My apologies,” he said. “I was unaware that you were going to be so informal.”
S/he paid no attention to his obvious discomfiture, or hir own undress. Instead, hir attention was riveted purely on the child, who was sitting up on the couch next to Slon. Xyon took one look at Burgoyne and made gleeful, cooing noises, his arms spinning in little circles.
He remembers me. That had been the most difficult thing for Burgoyne to come to terms with: that Xyon was not going to have any recollection whatsoever of his other parent. That Burgoyne was going to be a nonperson to him. But that was clearly not the case, at least not yet. It was painfully obvious that Xyon knew exactly who s/he was. Burgoyne went to him and picked him up, holding him tight against hirself, gasping at the warmth, the pure, vital life of him. Xyon burbled, and then began to slap at Burgoyne’s small breasts. Burgoyne didn’t understand why at first … but then s/he comprehended. “He wants to nurse,” s/he said with understanding. “He wants me to breast-feed him.”
