by Dave Stern
Phlox nodded. “Concealed inside a vial in the heel of one of his shoes. I also found several other concealed weapons, inside his clothing—and his body.”
“His body?”
“His teeth. Underneath his fingernails. Elsewhere.”
“It seems the ambassador was right, then,” Reed said, almost to himself. “This man was behind the attack on the outpost. He’s not Sarkassian.”
“I have no baseline readings to compare his with,” Phlox said. “But there are a number of drugs in his system which are masking certain phenotypical characteristics. Skin color, for one. Hair thickness, body odor—I can’t be entirely certain what other functions the drugs have.”
“But he’s in disguise?”
“Oh yes.”
“And still unconscious?”
“Not just unconscious. Here. Let me show you.” Phlox shut off the microscope, and turned on his workstation. The image of the alien, lying on one of the diagnostic beds, filled the screen. “He is in a deep coma—though perhaps coma is the wrong word, as my instruments reveal almost no indication of higher brain function.” Phlox frowned. “Of course, there is the possibility that in his species, neural activity is not based on the same biochemical reactions as ours.”
“I’m more concerned with whether or not he’s going to wake up and present an active danger to the ship.”
“I understand. On that matter, I have no way of knowing.”
Reed studied the prisoner—Goridian—for a moment. He saw that the security straps on the bed had been fastened. That was good.
But not good enough, he decided, remembering the destruction they’d seen at the outpost, the weapons Phlox found, and what the ambassador had said to him earlier:
“Take extreme caution when dealing with Goridian. He is capable of anything.”
“I want to move him to the brig we’ve set up—now,” Reed said. “Will that present a problem for you?”
Phlox hesitated only a second. “No. Not as long as I can continue to monitor his condition. It will be necessary to install a tie-in to my systems here.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll have Mister Bishop down here in a minute.” Reed hesitated a moment. “Doctor. Alana—Ensign Hart. How’s she doing?”
Now Phlox smiled. “See for yourself,” he said, and the image on the monitor changed to one of Hart, sitting up in another of the diagnostic beds.
She was reading.
Reed smiled as well. “That’s—incredible.”
“It is astounding. In less than twelve hours, she has managed to reacquire a working knowledge of the English language.”
“What’s she reading?”
Phlox consulted the monitor. “Technical documents relating to the armory.”
“She wants to get back to work.”
“I suspect you are correct. However, that would not be a good idea.”
“Why? You think the seizures might return?”
“No. My concern at the moment is not with her physical recovery, but her mental well-being.”
Reed frowned. “The fact that she’s trying so hard to relearn what she’s forgotten—isn’t that a positive sign?”
“Yes. But I wish she would express as much concern about recovering the personal details of her life. Who she was, rather than simply what she did.”
“Perhaps I can help her with that aspect of things.”
“Perhaps you can,” Phlox said.
Reed frowned. “I hear a ‘but’ in there.”
“Yes. No.” Phlox frowned. “I am sure it’s just an instrument error.”
“Doctor? What are you talking about?”
“Some readings I took. As I said, it’s not important.”
“It’s clearly bothering you, though.” Reed folded his arms across his chest. “Come on, Doctor. Tell me.”
“Well.” Phlox nodded. “All right. Like the ensign, I too have been reading. A bit far afield from the usual medical journals. Prompted by our discussion yesterday, as a matter of fact.”
“Go on.”
Phlox swiveled in his chair. “We were talking about memory loss,” he said, and cleared the screen again. An article appeared—one with very small print.
Reed peered over the Doctor’s shoulder and read the title.
“‘Measuring Quantum States Within Bioelectric Organisms.’” He had to laugh. “Our conversation prompted you to read this?”
“In a way. The article is several years old—among other things, it talks about the most challenging problem facing scientists who were then trying to build the transporter. That being, the successful measurement and replication of the complex web of electromagnetic fields associated with the human brain.”
Reed frowned. “What does this have to do with the readings you’re talking about?”
“I’m coming to that.” Phlox cleared the screen again, and a diagnostic chart filled it.
“This is Ensign Hart’s EEG—a measurement of the electrical activity in her brain. I regularly take EEGs from all the crew for their physicals. This one is from six months ago. And this”—he keyed in a few commands to the computer, and the screen split in half—“is an EEG I took this morning.”
“They’re different.”
“Very different.”
Reed frowned. “Isn’t that to be expected—given what’s happened to her?”
“Not to this degree—at least, not in my experience. Furthermore, the human brain is not the only part of the body that generates electricity. All cells produce it, as a part of their day-to-day functioning. I take readings of that activity as well. Taken in combination with the EEG, these readings produce a characteristic electromagnetic field—one that is specific to each individual. Some scientists believe that the essence of personality itself is contained within these fields—what makes us individuals.”
He put another set of readings up on the screen.
“Before the accident”—Phlox said, pointing to the chart on the left—“and after it,” he continued, pointing to the chart on the right.
“Different as well.”
“Completely different—which is impossible, of course. Which is why I’m reconstructing her medical file to compare these results with the ones taken while she was aboard Achilles.”
“Reconstructing?”
“Our older medical archives have been archived in preparation for our rendezvous with the Shi’ar,” Phlox said. “It’s taking quite some time for the system to find and extract Ensign Hart’s records.”
Reed shook his head. He didn’t completely see where Phlox was going with this. “What does all this have to do with memory loss?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Phlox said thoughtfully. He cleared the screen. “These readings are indicative of the kind of neural damage I was looking for yesterday—though it’s more a reconstructive process, a rewiring of critical pathways, than the destructive tissue loss I would have expected to see. But in either case,” he sighed, “it tells me that Ensign Hart’s memory loss is more than likely permanent.”
“I see,” Reed said. “What happened to the forty-eight-hour window you were talking about yesterday?”
“We’re in it now. And I see no signs of any recovery.” His eyes found Reed’s. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant.”
“There’s still hope though—isn’t there?”
“Well.” Phlox smiled. “There’s always hope.”
“Then let me get in there,” Reed said. “And see what I can do.”
* * *
“Hello.”
Alana turned away from the monitor quickly.
“Hello. Lieutenant Reed.”
Reed couldn’t hide his surprise. Her English was letter-perfect—a slight accent that she hadn’t had before, but he chalked that up to whatever language tapes she’d used.
“You remember me?”
“Yes. From yesterday.”
“That’s good,” he said, moving closer. Alana was wearing one of the standard-issue sickbay
gowns now instead of her uniform. Her hair was pulled up underneath a cap. The gown was loose—too big perhaps, or maybe it was just the way she was wearing it, but it made her look small, and frail, and vulnerable.
It made him want to hold her, to touch her.
Instead, he put the Corbett facsimile on the cot next to her.
“What is this?” she asked.
“It’s a book,” he said. “One of yours. We both were rather fond of it.”
“England in the Seven Years’ War.” She frowned. “What is England?”
“It’s a country on Earth,” he said. “Actually, the country where I come from. Alana, look at this book closely, please. Do you remember it at all?”
He turned the pages slowly for her, one at a time. Many of them were crinkled at the edges, from the night her drink had spilled. He watched her eyes as she studied it, hoping for a flicker of recognition.
She only shook her head.
“This is from a long time ago,” she said. “It is not important.”
“It’s more about strategy. How England was able to win such a long war.”
She shook her head. “Seven years is not a long war.”
With a sigh, Reed closed the book. “I suppose not, but—”
She looked up at him. “I was in war. The doctor said I was a soldier.”
“Well.” Reed smiled. “A little more than a soldier, I think.”
“And that I worked here.” She swiveled the monitor around so that Reed could see it. She was looking at a series of blueprints from the armory—the torpedo bays, the weapons lockers, the firing console.
“Yes,” he said.
“I am ready to work again.”
“You will,” he said gently. “But let’s take things one step at a time. Make sure you’re all better first.”
“I am all better. I am all fine.”
He smiled at her awkward construction of the language—she may have mastered the form, but she had a long ways to go before the idiom came back to her.
“Now is not the time for you to go back on duty,” he said firmly. “We’re in the middle of a very—complicated situation.”
“The Sarkassians.”
Reed couldn’t keep the surprise off his face.
“Yes—how did you know about them?”
She pointed to the workstation next to her. “This. The Sarkassians. The Shi’ar. I know.”
“Then I don’t have to explain. There’s not time to—to help you remember the things we do. We have to concentrate on the Sarkassians—make sure nothing goes wrong.” He smiled. “We don’t want that, do we?”
“No,” she said after a moment’s pause. “We don’t want that.”
He nodded. “That’s right. You can’t rush things. The Doctor wants to—and I want to—help you remember more about the past—not just what you used to do in the armory, but who you used to be. Your family, your friends…”
Impulsively, he reached out for her hand, and took it.
It was cold to the touch.
He looked up and found her eyes. They were cold as well.
In that instant, his heart sank. Phlox was right, he knew it then. The person lying on the cot before him—
It wasn’t Alana.
Alana was gone.
And she wasn’t coming back.
Twenty-One
SARKASSIAN OUTPOST
1/17/2151 1256 HOURS
ROAN HAD INSISTED ON COMING with him (“To make sure you get back safely”) and nothing Reed said could convince him otherwise.
He set a brisk pace, one that the commodore was barely able to match. By the time they reached the area where he’d found Alana, Roan was breathing heavily.
“We’re here.” Reed knelt down, running one hand along the ground. A thin layer of dirt coated the pyramid floor—he saw scuff marks where she had lain. “This is the place.”
They explored the area, and everything around it for fifty yards in all directions. No signs of any sort of machinery. Nothing on the tricorder, either.
Nothing but the stones, standing still and silent all around them.
“Grave markers,” Roan said suddenly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That is what these stones remind me of. Some of the other, more primitive cultures we have encountered—they dig holes in the ground and put their dead into them. Then they mark the location of those holes with markers. Such as these.”
“Tombstones,” Reed said. “That’s what we call them.”
“Excuse me?”
“The markers we use—tombstones.” Reed shrugged. “I hate to place us among your more primitive cultures, but we often bury our dead as well.”
“Why?”
“It provides us with a place to go—to be with the people who died. To remember them.”
“We cremate our dead—after harvesting all the usable organs. If we want to remember them, we have their images. Their words.”
“As do we, but—I’ve found there is a difference,” Reed said. “Having some place to go—set aside specifically for those memories.”
Roan nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Perhaps ‘primitive’ was the wrong way to describe such habits.”
Both were silent a moment. Reed forced his thoughts away from burial customs, and back to the problem at hand—what had happened to Alana. He walked back over to the spot where he’d first found her, and thought.
Goridian had booby-trapped the tunnel for them—or rather, for the Sarkassians, whom he’d been expecting to come after him. Had he set another trap here as well—one that Alana had triggered? One whose effects he had miscalculated, knocking himself unconscious in the bargain?
Or had Alana accidentally set something off that got the both of them? Or retriggered a device that had already hurt Goridian? If so, where was it?
His head spun with questions. He spun slowly in a circle, scanning the area yet again. Nothing.
He walked back over to Roan, lips pursed in frustration.
“Damm it,” he said. “There must be something here that could have—”
Roan had his arms folded behind his back, hands clasped together. He was staring back in the direction they’d come from, his eyes glistening.
“Sir?”
The commodore blinked, and sighed heavily.
“Are you all right?”
“Just—thinking, Lieutenant. About burial customs. The Ta’alaat use grave markers as well. Seeing all these”—he waved at the stones spread out before them—“I’m reminded of those who died at Dar Shalaan. Though there were no bodies, there, of course. They had to construct a monument.”
“Commodore—what happened there?”
“It is the same story I have told you before—up to a point, of course. Twenty years ago, within one of the Ta’alaat temples, we discovered an energy source of enormous power. By this point, we were more sensitive to the Ta’alaat’s concerns. We continued to allow them access to the site for the majority of each day, permitting our scientists to work only during the night hours. Neither side was happy with the arrangement, but—we thought it a fair compromise.
“Ta’alaat extremists did not, apparently. They struck during the night, killing our scientists, and occupying the temple. I was ordered to lead the counterstrike—to make an example of them.” Roan shook his head. “Actually, that’s not entirely correct. I volunteered to lead the counterstrike.
“Something we did in the attack—it caused the power source to explode. I remember—one minute, I was standing on a hill, overlooking the battle, in the midst of my troops. In the next…everything was gone. I was one of the lucky ones, to escape with these burns.” Roan shook his head. “It was a turning point in our history, needless to say. All official contacts between our peoples were severed. A turning point for me, as well. There were those among us who had all along fought to change our policy toward the Ta’alaat. I joined them then, hoping to perhaps make a difference. To make up for what I’d done.”
/> It was Reed’s turn to be silent a moment.
He thought of Alana—the guilt she’d felt over killing two Vulcan hostages by accident. It had tormented her all her life.
Multiply that guilt by a factor of—what, a hundred thousand? It was inconceivable. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what Roan felt.
But it at least gave him some insight into why the commodore was so determined to continue his fight.
Reed checked his tricorder. Ten minutes had passed. Fifty-five minutes left in his launch window.
“We still have some time, Commodore. I’d like to enlarge the search area, see if we can’t—”
Something made a sound behind him. Reed turned.
Ambassador Valay emerged from behind one of the stones. Two men stepped out with her.
“I’m afraid time is what you no longer have, gentlemen.”
Reed had reached for his phase pistol the instant he’d heard a noise. The grip in his hand, he started to raise it and fire—
And saw that the two men with Valay both held weapons, pointed straight at him and the Commodore.
He lowered his.
“Good,” Valay said. “But better to drop it entirely—in my direction.”
He did as she asked. Valay picked up the pistol, not taking her eyes off him the entire time.
Roan had turned a split second after Reed. Now he faced Valay, and the others, and his eyes widened in surprise.
“Kellan? Ash? You’re with her?”
“After what you have done?” The man who’d spoken took another step forward, the gun in his hand shaking. His anger was palpable. “You dare ask that?”
“What I’ve done?” He glared at Valay. “Kellan, what lies has she been telling you?”
“That you had made cause with the humans—sold them the secrets of our technology in exchange for money.”
“It is a lie.”
“We have been tracking you since you landed,” Kellan said. “You took this man to the scientists’ quarters, and then here.”
Reed frowned. They hadn’t picked up any sign at all of the ambassador’s ship leaving orbit.
And all of a sudden he knew why. The phondrikaar. Valay’s ship was a Striker—Roan had said that material, impervious to their sensors, had been incorporated into the hulls of all such ships.
