Architects of Infinity

by Kirsten Beyer

  Jepel and Vincent seemed genuinely flummoxed by Patel’s choice.

  Lasren was not. He was, however, kicking himself for having failed her so thoroughly and for his final, entirely inaccurate characterization of her last orders as their team leader. She wasn’t sacrificing the rest of us. She only ever intended to sacrifice herself.

  He alone had known how seriously Patel was taking this mission. And he alone could have accessed her emotions, especially in those final moments, and done something to prevent her from taking the course she had chosen.

  He hadn’t because he had been blind to the depth of Devi Patel’s transformation during their mission and because he had been so concerned for his own safety at the end that he had consciously chosen to focus only on himself.

  That’s the difference, he decided, between leaders and followers. No matter what, leaders put themselves last. The windows he had peered through that had allowed him to see Devi Patel’s demons had shown him a young woman driven by a need to achieve. But that was hardly a unique thing among Starfleet officers. More important, they had shown him a young woman trying to do that in a place that might never make room for her voice or her accomplishments. They lived in a world with no outward signifiers of achievement. The accumulation of personal wealth or commodities meant nothing among their peers. Respect and acknowledgment were the Federation’s only currency.

  This made it easy for those who weren’t driven by a desire to excel. A Federation citizen, a Starfleet officer, could live a lifetime of comfort, adventure, and dedicated effort without risking much of anything, should they so desire.

  But those who wanted more often found themselves faced with the prospect of a future that provided no certain path to silencing the demons that had driven them to Starfleet in the first place.

  There was nothing wrong with Devi Patel wanting more. And while she had taken a few risks he found unacceptable during their time on the planet, in the end she had decided that she alone would bear the greatest risk and make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of safeguarding her team and honoring what they had all achieved together. A lot of people might think what she had done was foolish, or the result of an insufficient sense of personal regard.

  Lasren believed that he had witnessed, without even realizing it at the time, the moment when one of his fellow voyagers grew beyond their limitations and fears and became that which they had always desired to be. Her last act had not been meant to secure her own glory. One needed to be alive for that to mean anything. Her choice had been a statement of selflessness, something he had not credited her with possessing. And it had never once occurred to him. He hadn’t given a second thought to the knowledge they had acquired. His only concern had been surviving.

  This truth made him feel small. He knew it wasn’t meant to. It merely signified that while he and Devi were only a few years apart in age, they were light-years apart in other ways.

  Devi stirred. Her eyes fluttered open.

  Lasren and the others instantly rose to their feet.

  “Hey, Devi. How are you feeling?”

  “Do you need anything? Does anything hurt?”

  It took her a few more moments to realize where she was.

  Instantly, Lasren found himself standing in the cavern once again. He saw through her eyes the last moments she had witnessed, the consummation of the purpose of the planet and its technology. He felt her fear, but he also felt her exultation.

  “Give her some air, guys,” Lasren chided the others.

  “I’m alive?” Patel croaked.

  Lasren took her hand and nodded. “You are.”

  “How?”

  “Gwyn.”

  “Huh,” Patel said, as if this thought confused her. “Is she okay?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s good.”

  “You have about a million messages from the rest of the fleet,” Vincent said. “Everybody has already heard about what you did and is pulling for you.”

  “That’s nice,” Patel said softly.

  “Why don’t you guys go tell Doctor Sharak that his patient is awake?” Lasren suggested.

  Jepel and Vincent nodded in understanding and stepped away.

  “Don’t be angry,” Patel said as soon as they were alone.

  “I’m not. I’m in awe.”

  “I don’t think I deserve that either.”

  “Maybe not. But you’re going to get it anyway, so get used to it.” After a moment, he added, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For abandoning you at the end.”

  “I didn’t give you a choice.”

  “And why was that?”

  Patel closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were glistening. “I didn’t get it before—the reason I had never managed to stand out here. I thought it was because I wasn’t given the same chances as everyone else. What I finally figured out was that I wasn’t doing enough with the chances I was given. There really are things worth dying for. But I couldn’t make that call for anyone but myself.”

  “If you had asked, we might have found another way.”

  “If I had asked, you would have talked me out of it.”

  “I would have tried.”

  The panel above Patel’s head pinged softly.

  “You have another message. From Seven,” he said in surprise.

  Patel inhaled deeply. “Great.”

  “Don’t you want to hear it?”

  “Not right now.”

  “You just faced down death. You think this could be worse than that?”

  Patel shook her head. “Fine. Just play it.”

  Lasren retrieved the message and Seven’s voice sounded softly around them.

  “Lieutenant Patel. I have begun an analysis of the data you recovered from the planet. I understand you were seriously injured and I hope that your recovery is swift. As soon as you are able, we will be assembling several teams to continue our study of the Edrehmaia’s technology. Your leadership will be essential to our success. Please let me know as soon as you are able to return to duty.”

  Lasren felt his chest tighten. When he looked back at Devi, she was weeping freely.

  VESTA

  The moment Doctor Sal returned to Vesta she was ordered to report to Captain Farkas’s ready room. When she arrived, Counselor Cambridge was already there.

  Sal had waited an extra hour after Galen had rejoined the fleet in hopes that Ensign Gwyn would return. Instead Lieutenant Kim had reported that Gwyn had requested time to rest. Sal had to admit that the poor woman had earned it. The fleet’s reprieve meant that there would be plenty of time ahead to determine whether or not Sal’s suspicions about the termination of Gwyn’s finiis’ral were true.

  She could see from Regina’s face, however, that a different kind of reckoning was at hand. She had known that face for most of her life, and Regina was no good at poker. She was beyond furious, which meant that Cambridge had been telling tales out of school.

  “Should I sit?” Sal asked wearily.

  “This won’t take long,” Farkas replied. “After discussing your actions over the last several days regarding the care of your patients Lieutenant Conlon and Ensign Gwyn, I have decided to restrict you from further participation in their cases.”

  Sal was over eighty years old, so she was often cold, no matter what the ambient temperature was. The ice pouring through her veins now had nothing to do with her age.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Oh, yes, El’nor, I do. You should be glad I’m not adding official disciplinary actions and a report to the board of Starfleet Medical as well.”

  “Ensign Gwyn,” Sal began softly.

  “Ensign Gwyn was the worst of it, but hardly all of it,” Farkas said. “Before you even got to Gwyn, you pushed Lieutenant Kim to approve a medical procedure for his child that you knew full well its mother did not want. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “This was your doing?” Sal demanded of Ca
mbridge.

  “Priorities are tricky things,” Cambridge admitted. “On the one hand, your previous experience with Vega Nine makes you the ideal doctor to take the lead in curing Nancy Conlon. On the other, almost every choice you have made regarding Nancy Conlon, up to and including your willingness to endanger another life to save hers, suggests that you lack appropriate perspective to remain on either case.”

  “You promised me,” Regina hissed. “You swore to me that you knew exactly what to do and that Ensign Gwyn was risking nothing more than a blood draw.”

  “I could not have foreseen the series of events that caused Ensign Gwyn’s metamorphic cells to assert themselves the way they did.”

  “You artificially enhanced them,” Farkas said, her voice rising.

  “And had she not been forced to undergo antiproton therapy, that wouldn’t have been a problem. Did the counselor also tell you that her body apparently reverted to its normal state without further intervention?”

  “He did. But before that happened she suffered a great deal, did she not?”

  “It was not my intention,” Sal began.

  “I don’t give a good goddamn about your intentions, El’nor. I know what drove you here. You’ve been carrying a grudge against the Kriosian elders for decades now. You want to humiliate them, to punish them for what they did to that poor woman. Nancy Conlon’s condition gave you cover.

  “But neither you nor I will ever be in a position to extract the kind of vengeance you are seeking, nor will exposing them to the Federation at large do anything other than divide our people at a time when we are still trying to recover from our near extinction at the hands of the Borg.”

  “Spare me your sanctimonious platitudes, Regina. This isn’t about Kataly Norol or the fact that she was murdered by her government to ensure her silence. We’re talking about a civilization that condoned the violent repression of half of their population for thousands of years. The people of Krios will never be free of that until they understand their history and confront the darkness of their own instincts.”

  “Maybe,” Farkas agreed. “But who the hell put you in charge of deciding which civilizations are worthy of Federation membership? The thousands of years our people spent doing worse by most of the human race, male and female, isn’t exactly a sterling recommendation for our membership either.”

  “We moved beyond that kind of thinking.”

  “So have most of them.”

  “As long as metamorphs are used as pawns for political gain, I am forced to disagree with that assessment, Captain.”

  The air between them was thick with righteous indignation.

  “You realize, of course, the problem is that you’re both right,” Cambridge interjected at his peril. This had the effect of temporarily silencing both of them as they directed their attention toward the counselor.

  “There is not a single race in our Federation, probably not in the entire universe, that can claim a perfect record when it comes to its social development. The good news is none of them have ever claimed otherwise.

  “The Federation is an organization of individuals, but it is also an idea. It is a framework, a set of agreed-upon principles that guide civilizations as they continue to develop. It is a commitment to the attempt to do better, to become a more perfect union.

  “We don’t get there by forgetting our past, but nor do we get there by holding current generations responsible for that past as long as they have unraveled the systemic injustices that held them back, or are working diligently to do so.

  “The good captain sees our universe as it is. The good doctor demands that the universe do better. But in this instance, you both erred in almost exactly the same way. Neither of you saw fit to bring Doctor Sal’s deeply held convictions to the attention of her colleagues. Had you done so, we might have been able to mitigate some of the more unfortunate consequences of her actions before they endangered Ensign Gwyn’s life. You chose silence, Captain, because you did not want to believe the worst of your friend. You kept your intentions secret, Doctor, because you knew that dragged out under the harsh light of day, they would have been found to be ethically suspect at best.”

  Farkas crossed to stand directly in front of Sal. “Not that long ago, El’nor, you and I sat in this office discussing the moral lapses of Commander Jefferson Briggs. Apart from the body count, explain to me the difference between his actions and yours.”

  Sal felt the strike as if it had landed across her face.

  “This is why we make rules. Because even the best of us, when faced with high enough stakes, can justify almost anything in the name of a potential solution. You crossed the line, El’nor. You know you did. I wouldn’t be your friend, or your captain, if I didn’t drag you back to the other side.”

  “You just sentenced Nancy Conlon to death.”

  “No, I didn’t. I don’t know exactly whom to blame for her current condition, but it isn’t me. And there are dozens of dedicated physicians in this fleet who will step in and do what they can to save her. Your actions were not those of a dedicated physician. They were those of someone who has run out of ideas.”

  Sal squared her shoulders. “Am I dismissed, Captain?”

  “Yes.”

  Epilogue

  * * *

  GALEN

  When Harry Kim finally entered the medical bay, he could see through the transparent window into Nancy’s suite that her bed was empty.

  “Doctor?” he called out urgently.

  “In here, Mister Kim,” the Doctor’s voice replied.

  Kim followed it and found Nancy seated upright in a chair beside the incubator in which their daughter floated. She lifted her face to his, and for a few moments it looked as if she didn’t recognize him.

  “Nancy?”

  “Hi, Harry,” she said softly.

  “We brought the lieutenant out of her coma a few hours ago and since then have been bringing her up to date on some of the more significant developments of the last several days,” the Doctor reported.

  “How is she?” Kim asked.

  “She’s right here,” Conlon replied a little tersely.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .”

  “I am pleased to say that her neurological functions are once again within normal limits and that she does not appear to have suffered any long-term damage from the rupture,” the Doctor said.

  Kim pulled up a chair to sit beside Conlon and reached out, taking her nearer hand in his. “That’s great news, isn’t it?”

  Conlon nodded.

  “I’m sure you both have a great deal to discuss,” the Doctor said. “If you need me, I’ll be in my office.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Conlon said.

  “Yeah, thanks, Doc.”

  To prevent a prolonged silence from becoming unbearable Kim said, “I guess the Doctor told you what happened with the baby.”

  “He did. The last thing I remember I was standing in the most beautiful forest. The next thing I know, I’m a mother.”

  “What forest?” Kim asked.

  Conlon chuckled in spite of herself. “Really? You want to know all about the quaking aspens?”

  “I want to know everything there is to know about you,” he replied honestly.

  Conlon looked away. “I was actually okay. I had finally made peace with the fact that I couldn’t use this child’s cells to cure me if I was unwilling to commit to raising her as best I could. I was content with that choice.”

  “I know,” Kim said. “And if that’s still your choice, I’m okay with that. I will make sure that our daughter is taken care of. It doesn’t have to be your problem.”

  Conlon stared at him for a moment as if he were a completely unidentifiable alien species. “That choice no longer exists, Harry. She’s here now. She’s ours. And we are hers.”

  Kim knew she could see the relief wash over his face.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked softly.

  “Tell you what
?”

  “How much you wanted the baby?”

  Kim shrugged. “I just couldn’t. I couldn’t do one more thing to make your life harder.”

  “And I didn’t give you much of a chance, did I?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. I was so scared. I still am. But everything is different now.” After a pause, she continued. “The quaking aspens are a unique tree. From a single seed, thousands of interwoven roots give rise to tens of thousands of trees. From a distance it looks like countless individuals. The less obvious truth is that all of them are one.

  “You and I and her are like that, Harry. We look like three, but we’re really one.”

  Conlon gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “You know how sometimes when you turn a problem over and over in your head, you get stuck. No matter how you try to find new ways of thinking about it, you just keep falling into the same old patterns of thought that lead nowhere productive?”

  “I guess. Sure,” Kim said.

  “That’s where I was. That’s what I went looking for before my brain decided to start bleeding out. I needed a new way to think about all of this. A new perspective.”

  “Did you find it?”

  Conlon turned her head to stare at the gestational incubator.

  “No. I can’t lie about this, Harry. Not to myself and not to either of you. The odds are really good that I’m not going to be functioning very well by this time next year, even if the doctors can keep me alive after I start to develop all of the other conditions that will result from my DNA’s inability to repair itself.”

  “I’m not saying the problem is going to be easy to solve. But I do believe the doctors will find a way to solve it eventually,” Kim insisted.

  “They might. But they might not. It just might not be possible.”

  “We do impossible things out here every damn day. That’s pretty much Starfleet’s unwritten mission statement.”

  “You’re not helping,” Conlon said softly. “I understand what you’re trying to do. You don’t want me to lose hope. You want me to fight, for myself and for all of us. But I don’t want to spend what time I have left at war with myself or you. I want to enjoy it as best I can. And that means accepting that there are limits to it. There are things I’m just never going to get to do.”