Blackout

by Phaedra M. Weldon

  “Bart, you’re going to have to open your eyes and sit up. Otherwise I’m going to pour this down your throat by force.”

  What? Who was that? It wasn’t Carol, or even Corsi, though it had the brute force of Domenica.

  He opened one eye, then the other. The light from a lamp behind someone’s head was a bit blinding. “Oh…déjà vu here. I’ve had this dream before.” He stared up into the smiling face of Dr. Elizabeth Lense. Behind her was Carol, and to the side was Corsi. “Uhm…and you were there, and you were there,” he smiled at the security chief. “And even you as the cowardly lion.”

  “Oh, he’s fine,” Carol said and moved away.

  “What was that I heard about pouring something down my throat?” Bart gave Elizabeth a weak smile. “I assure you I’m not so old as to not drink without dribbling.”

  “Here,” she handed him a cup of something warm and he managed to sit up.

  They were back inside the shuttle and he was again prone on the same couch he’d passed out on before. Why is it this trip I seem to be spending more time on my back than upright? He sniffed the drink. “Smells like chicken soup.”

  “It is.” Lense picked up her small scanner and ran it along Bart’s body before checking her tricorder. “Your system’s recovering from some sort of shock.”

  “Poplin,” Bart said and sipped the soup. It tasted good and salty in his mouth and he felt his stomach unclench and rumble.

  “Actually it was the stimulant Riz gave you. It wore off.” Lense closed her tricorder. “I think you’ll be okay, but I’d like to run a full set of tests on you in sickbay. I think you should return to the da Vinci with me and convalesce there.”

  He smiled at her, and for a brief second, he believed she understood his need to remain on the planet. “I have a door to open.”

  “Jolen’s already working on the mechanics of it. He hopes to open it without the need to decipher the combination.” Carol put her hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn of her own. “You’ve been asleep for nearly four hours, you know.”

  Bart gulped down more of the broth, ignoring the burn on his tongue as he moved himself into a sitting position. “Has Jolen been at it long?”

  “Not really,” Carol said, a slight smile on the edge of her lips. “He stayed in here with you until Elizabeth said you were going to be all right. He was really scared.”

  Lense’s right eyebrow arched. “I noticed that too. You have an admirer, Bart. And a handsome one at that.”

  Bart bit back a reply and stood. This time he didn’t sit down again as he had before, though he came close to it. He grabbed a nearby handrail and steadied himself. “I need to get back to work. With the way that Asarion’s luck runs, he’ll trigger another blackout by monkeying about with the internal systems. Better if we go through language and symbols.”

  “Bart.” Carol put a hand on his shoulder as Lense moved away. “Don’t be angry with Jolen. As Jewlan, she had no choice but to steer away from the knowledge that Jolen afforded her. Her society’s norms are very different than our own.”

  “They’re stupid, Carol. I’ve been with you on countless worlds and I’ve seen things that would normally curl my beard, but this…” He shook his head. “This edges on plain stupidity. Aren’t lives more important than societal norms?”

  “Not always,” Carol said and her voice was sad. “And you know that. Just don’t be too harsh on him, okay? He was worried sick until Elizabeth pronounced you healthy. I’d say you were more grumpy.”

  “I am not grumpy.”

  “Bart, you’ve been a grump ever since the wedding. And don’t think I don’t know why, because you told me. And now you’re even grumpier because there’s another man in the situation, a man in that cave who likes you and admires you, same as Anthony.”

  “Wait, what have I missed here?” Lense paused while repacking her medical bag. “Bart, are you and Anthony having problems?”

  “Yes.” Bart closed his eyes. “No. Look, I don’t know. I’m just not…ahhhh…” He set the cup of broth on a side counter and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Look, it’s just complicated, all right?”

  “What, that Jolen was a woman first?” Carol said.

  Lense frowned. “Wait—that was a woman?”

  Bart leaned forward. He was half fascinated with Carol’s outburst as much as angered by it. “No, and yes. Complicated meaning me, my life, my past. I just can’t…” He straightened and closed his eyes. Two deep breaths. “I can’t risk that kind of commitment—not again.”

  “And with Jolen, there is no commitment.” Carol took a step forward. “You like him, Bart. And that’s eating at you. With Anthony you were safe. He’s slotted into his time, his place in your life. Neat and orderly. But Jolen is here. And he’s not neat, and he’s not orderly. And he won’t stay. Jolen is not in the Alpha State. And for the first time someone else has turned your head.”

  Lense’s eyes widened and Bart noticed the shadows had vanished, for a moment. “Bart, what about Anthony? Do you care about that young man? The one that was just in here?”

  “He cares for Jewlan, which means he cares for Jolen.”

  “Stop it.” Bart put up his hands. “I do not care for Jewlan, or Jolen, in any romantic or physical way. I’m going back to work.” He moved to the shuttle’s doorway.

  “Do too,” came Carol’s soft reply.

  Bart held his tongue as he walked out into the brisk night toward the cave’s entrance. The stars were bright and twinkling—a spattering of diamonds over a black velvet surface.

  He passed through each chamber, ignoring the first one, his attention drawn by the second one and then halted by the Third Chamber. Since they’d walked through the chambers the first time, something nagged at him about them. He was no culturalist, but he’d been around Carol enough to know that each ascending period in this ship did not match the one before.

  Cultures moved along specific patterns, with similarities in pottery, art, and sometimes design. There was no such progression in each of the chambers. If these chambers were meant to be displays of these people’s history, then it was a mishmash of styles and culture.

  But what if each chamber worked in a ranking order? What if the former inhabitants of this ship kept their people in specific roles. From primitive, perhaps the laborers, and then on up to artisans, and then leaders?

  Bart came around the corner of the Fourth Chamber’s slight pathway to the door. Jolen sat at the table, a piece of parchment spread out before him. He was drawing something with a tipped pen.

  “Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”

  The tall Asarion popped up from the chair like a buoy submerged in a sea. His face paled before a smile cracked the surface and warmth flooded his cheeks. “Bart…you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just a slight bad reaction to that stimulant. But I’ll live.” He looked up at Jolen, again caught by the intense blue within his bright eyes. They were Jewlan’s eyes, of that he had no doubt. “Look, about what I said. I was angry—and I spoke out of turn.”

  “No, no.” Jolen set his tools on the table, carefully avoiding touching the scrolls. “You were right. For you, that is. For me, speaking such suspicions to my own people—though they were the right course and saved lives—well, I was already in enough trouble.”

  “But did you know about the field and the panel all along?”

  “Not in so many words.” Jolen took a step closer to Bart. “I didn’t put things together until I watched and listened to you and Carol. Then it all made sense and I was free to do what needed to be done.”

  Bart rubbed at his beard as he moved away from Jolen to the table. “Still…from now on, when you have any thoughts on something, feel free to tell me, okay?”

  “Sure. I can do that.” He ducked his head and smiled. “I’m glad you’re okay, Bart.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” He nodded to the drawing. “That’s very good. What is it?”

  “It’s a schema
tic of the panel I found.” Jolen nodded toward the door.

  Bart turned and saw an exposed area of wires and glowing circuits. “Nice. Made any progress?”

  “Not yet.” Jolen sat back down. “I’m still working on the mechanism.”

  “Well.” Bart picked up one of the parchments he’d been working on before Jolen’s Beta-shift and then spread it out beside Jolen’s drawing. “I found the reference for the fifth symbol here, in the fifth scroll from the temple. Now, I can cross-reference the meanings back to my own people’s histories when they too believed that the four basic elements needed the fifth element for creation. That fifth element is spirit. Or, taking a lead from your own palm-pad, love.”

  When he looked up from his sketches he was surprised at the wide-eyed look of horror on Jolen’s face. His mouth was pulled tight in a thin line and his hands, resting atop the table, balled into fists.

  Bart frowned. “What is it? Are you ill?”

  “No, I can’t—” Jolen stood, the chair scraping against the tile floor. “I can’t look at this. It’s not my work, Bart. I can’t help you with the language anymore. I must work on opening the door a different way.”

  Something snapped somewhere inside of Bart. He’d been patient through all of this nonsense, and the Prime Directive be damned. He slammed his fist down as hard as he could on the table, rattling the inkwells and sending the scrolls tumbling to the floor.

  Jolen immediately lunged to retrieve them but Bart reached out and took his arm, pulling him back. “Oh, no you don’t. This is bullshit. Don’t you dare tell me in one breath that you can’t work with me on language anymore, that you no longer care about symbols and meanings and then you try and protect those scrolls.”

  The Asarion paused and then stood, looking at Bart. The two were close in height, with Jolen only a centimeter higher. “I—they should be protected.”

  “Why? They’re not a part of your mechanic’s profession. They’re scrolls with words on them, Jolen. Just words. Why would you try and protect them?”

  The dark-haired man blinked several times. “I—I have to protect them.”

  “Because it’s your job? No, because you love them, Jolen. Because you still have the same love of words and paper and meaning and symbols that Jewlan has. Because it’s a part of you, and no shift in gender is going to change that. It never will.”

  Jolen looked down at the scrolls. “Please, let me pick them up.”

  Bart realized he still had a firm hold on Jolen’s arm and released it. The tall Asarion immediately bent down and started gathering up scrolls.

  Well, that went well, you arrogant nit. With a sigh, Bart moved to the other side of the table and knelt down facing Jolen. He picked up a scroll and heard Jolen sniff. “Jolen, I’m sorry. I’m just—this is frustrating for me. I don’t come from a society that has gender-based rules—well not anymore. It did once. But we got past that. And I still have this headache from the stimulant.”

  “You miss him, and yet you are angry with him.”

  Jolen’s words cut through the awkward situation and brought his attention up sharply. He stared at Jolen, who had fixed him with a piercing blue stare. “What? Who? What do you mean?”

  “Anthony. You are angry with him. Is it because you are not married?”

  Oh, man, not this again. How did we go from gender-based stupidity to being married? Bart lowered his shoulders. “Jolen, there are just some things I’m not comfortable with. And talking about marriage, or even the thought of it, is one of them.”

  “Why?”

  How many times had he asked himself that question? And how many times had he avoided the answer? Was it because he was afraid of commitment? Could be. Or was it because he felt he’d limit his options by being tied down to one person?

  “I don’t think you’re going to resolve your conflicts with Anthony until you resolve them within yourself.” Jolen shifted from his knees and sat down beneath the table. “For my people, marriage means a lifelong commitment. This is because when one of us decides to have children, the very act of childbirth ends all shifting for the rest of our lives.”

  Bart nodded. “Carol had said as much.”

  “But did you know only female Alpha States can do this? And only a male Alpha State can seed a female Alpha State? The great escape from the Borg drastically cut our population to nearly an eighth of what it was, Bart. Before their invasion of our world, we had only a few conclaves that practiced gender-specific roles. What is the first priority when settling a new world?”

  This was easy. “Procreation. To continue the species.”

  “Yes. We were female-Alpha-State heavy in those early decades, because so many of them gave birth, locking themselves into female-only roles, until the balance between states tipped the other way, and our male Alphas became too few. We decided then to limit ourselves and the gender-specific roles came into play again. We’ve kept a precarious balance between science and defense in this manner. The only midpoint is medicine. It is shared by both genders.”

  “I see.” Bart shook his head. “No I don’t see. Why must roles in life be gender-specific at all?”

  “When the Borg came, our men and women fought bravely. And they died. The lucky ones did. Those that were assimilated—we have no idea what their lives became afterward. But it depleted our birth-giving females. Many of our surviving leaders believed this was because we’d allowed them to fight.” He looked away, his eyes unfocused as he remembered another time, another world. “We weren’t perfect, Bart. Far from it. Men had taken the role of leadership because of their aggressive natures. Especially Alpha States. We had wars, fought on our own soil. And some of those battles were over our way of life.” He refocused on Bart. “There had always been those that believed in freedom of choice, and those that believed in roles.”

  Bart searched the man’s face. What he saw was sadness, and some regret. “Those that believed in roles had a greater argument, didn’t they? They had the leverage of survival with them.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe I can see that point. A little.”

  Jolen leaned his head to his right shoulder. “Do you, Bart? To give birth is a miracle in our society. And to do so, both parties must proclaim a lifetime of love, because both states make the commitment, on both sides. Family is very important to us.” He swallowed. “My own mother died before I had my first shift. I was two years overdue, and she was worried about my acceptance in society. They tried to have another child, but she died in childbirth, and my sibling died with her.”

  Something hung in Bart’s throat at Jolen’s mention of having a sibling. He was swept back along the chain of his own memories, to a moment in his childhood. There had been a door at the end of the hall. The smells of coppery death filled the house as the doctors worked on the destroyed cells.

  And beyond that door there had been screams.

  Terrible, pain-riddled screams.

  His father had stepped from that door, his face a mask of torment. He had looked down at his frail son, a boy born so sickly they hadn’t predicted him to live more than a month at best.

  Little Bartholomew had proven them all wrong. He had lived.

  But from the look on his father’s face, his sister had not.

  “Bart?”

  The linguist blinked. He was back again beneath the table in the Fourth Chamber of a mystery ship. There were no longer smells of death in the air, but the musty scents of old ghosts. He took in a breath, his body shuddering. “I—I was remembering the day my sister died. My father was an archaeologist. My mother was a cultural specialist like Carol. We were on a Federation world, checking out some ruins. I had been fascinated by the writing I’d found in one of the caves. And I…”

  Bart paused. The memories of that afternoon came crashing back. How long had he hidden them away? How long had he shoved them to the back of his life?

  He felt a strong hand cover his own. Bart looked at Jolen. Really looked at him. He saw a ma
n. Not a species. But a caring, feeling individual. “What happened?” Jolen’s voice was soft. Easy to listen to.

  Bart swallowed. “I found the warnings—too late. The cave wasn’t a temple as we’d thought. It was a place of punishment, where the wicked were sent to die.”

  He could see it all again. Oh God, no…

  She’d been standing by the monster’s head, the carved, stone image of what Bart had thought was a lion, but later learned was the representation of law.

  Of punishment.

  And of death.

  Their father had been near the side, examining a panel discovered the day before.

  Bart had just translated the basic consonants and vowels of the language and was in the ship, applying what he’d learned to the writings on the temple’s walls. He’d believed the site was a temple. It was safe for them to go inside.

  “Bart, you’re shaking.” Jolen reached out and took the linguist by the arm. “Bart?”

  He’d heard the screams then, and learned what had happened to her.

  “Acid,” Bart stammered, his voice low. “Corrosive to anything and everything. It covered her. Ignited her skin. Burned her alive. There was nothing the doctors could do.”

  Jolen touched Bart’s cheek with his hand. His hand was warm and Jolen smelled faintly of jasmine. “Bart—you didn’t know. Not even your parents knew.”

  “But I should have. I translated it wrong!”

  The Asarion looked stricken. “You did?”

  “I’m the one who told them it was a religious temple. I told them it was safe inside—even when I couldn’t go in myself.”

  “Couldn’t go? You weren’t allowed inside the temple?”

  “No. I—I wasn’t a very healthy child. My kidneys started failing early on in childhood and I was bedridden most of the time. The Federation’s medicine couldn’t even regenerate new organs. I’m allergic to the compounds used in Retlax Five. Nothing could stop my organs’ deterioration. I was dying.”

  Bart felt his own hand squeeze harder. And he wondered if he did this because he wanted Jolen to hurt just as he was hurting. How dare he force these memories back to the surface.