“This valley is old, eroded, beaten down,” she replied. “Yet the lava replenishes, creates, and makes it new again. This is a place I came often with my mate.”
Jerit hung his head and averted his eyes. He tried to pull his hand away, but Teska grasped it all the tighter.
“In our beliefs,” said the priestess, “the katra is our soul ... the essence of our being. Just before death, a Vulcan uses the mind-meld to entrust his katra to a loyal friend, so that he can share it with the departed’s loved ones. I know that neither you nor Hasmek is a Vulcan, and you have no training in this, yet when we melded I sensed that Hasmek’s death made a deep impression on you. It was not just a memory, but an event which represented much of what was wrong in your life. As the last person he saw, you undoubtedly made a strong impression on him. Because of this, I feel that Hasmek lives on in you.”
The Romulan looked pained. “But I killed him. He’s dead because of me.”
“No,” she insisted, shaking her head. “That is like blaming the knife. Better you should blame me, or my uncle, who arranged our marriage. Or we could blame our feuding ancestors, who tore the Vulcans and Romulans apart millennia ago. The past is like a pool of water—put your hand in anywhere, and the ripples spread across the [296] entire pool. It is all joined—there is no way to separate one event from another.”
Now Jerit gripped her hand and looked plaintively into her eyes. “I want to make it up to you, Teska. I want to make it up to everyone I’ve harmed.”
She nodded with understanding. “Like this valley, we constantly reinvent ourselves. You are not the same person who killed Hasmek, and I am not the same person who married him. We spent a great deal of time apart, which both of us saw as normal. In hindsight, I am uncertain of the wisdom of that. Being apart made both of us weaker. It doomed Hasmek.”
“If you were mine, I would never leave you,” he said solemnly.
“You speak with the learned wisdom of all three of us,” Teska concluded. “Now take my hand and look into my eyes, and I will speak the ancient ritual of grief and loss. Only Hasmek is not lost. He has been found.”
About the e-Book
(SEPTEMBER, 2003)—Scanned, proofed, and formatted by Bibliophile.
STAR TREK: TNG - The Genesis Wave, Book Three Page 30
